The Rise of Darth Xander
by Dhagon
Summary: YAHF/Ship of the Line Challenge inspired. Xander goes as Darth Vader for Halloween. Changed by the events of that night, he decides to forge his own destiny. And as the rest of the galaxy will discover, sometimes evil is best fought by another kind of evil.
1. Prologue

Ship of the Line: Xander's Fist

Janus decides to directly meddle that Halloween.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Inspired by Ship of the Line: An Unlikely Hope by Oxnate and the original challenge by Zaion

(A/N), edited: I moved the Stargate Show forwards a few months to sync with the Buffy Show episodes.

Prologue

Janus, Lord of Change and Chaos, considered his future. Granted, he couldn't actually forsee the future, but he thought he could still see his own fate clearly enough. He was being marginalized. Even now he was greatly diminished from his once lofty heights. He used to have entire temples dedicated to him, filled with worshippers. Now his few remaining temples were tourist attractions and he had few true followers left. He couldn't really blame them, with the Powers That Be blocking any true change not under their control, he looked quite impotent.

Oh, he had been feted be the Powers That Be when they needed him, back when they were first consolidating their position. Back when the Old Ones roamed and their reign firmly entrenched they had needed him. Even afterwards when the various competing Powers had vied for supremacy he had been needed.

However, now that the Powers That Be weren't facing threats to their existence, they only cared about their plans. Their careful deliberate organization of the future had no room for spontaneity. They were attempting to reduce all of reality into an elaborate chess match against their opponents.

They were also afraid of the Ancients. Terrified any overt move on their part would spell their end as it had for so many other beings. Granted the Ancients were scary, but what was life without risk? A life of caution was but a stale lingering death.

Such bitter thoughts lightened when Janus considered his newest plot. Alexander Harris had broken a prophecy and thus disrupted foresight. The disruption didn't last long, but had lasted long enough to disguise a few moves.

Janus had declared the taking of a champion and secretly crafted a gift woven of his very own essence. He then directed a follower of his to eventually venture to the Hellmouth to pass on his offer. Even he didn't know what would happen afterwards as the divine energy infused the target and instead of coopting the chosen's destiny, it completely shattered it.

Thoughts of currently most important follower turned his attention to him. Ethan Rayne wasn't the most devout of his followers, but he was definitely capable. He had also taken his guidelines and exceeded expectations. His Halloween plans promised to be very useful.

Janus carefully made a few adjustments to the package Ethan was to deliver on his behalf. After all, cumulatively humanity possessed incredible energy and it was possible to draw upon it under the right circumstances.

* * *

Ethan Rayne sighed in relief when he finally saw Alexander Harris walk through his door. He had been worried, it was only hours before the ritual and he had yet to deliver the gift from Janus. Failure would have forced him to abandon all of his plans. Calling upon Janus after directly failing him would not have been healthy.

Ethan wondered how a highschool student had managed to gain the interest of Janus. From what he could see Alexander seemed like an average student with messy hair and a joking attitude. He smirked as he wondered if Alexander would find his gift funny.

He hoped Alexander appreciated it. Ethan had found the gift inspirational, so much so that he had been moved to made a number of matching costumes. After all it was his duty to support the champion of his god, or at least provide support.

He could barely keep from laughing thinking about all those parent who bought his costumes for their children. Sure including nightvision lenses in them meant he took a loss, but he had managed to sell them all. After all, he really didn't want Janus to find fault in his support.

Ethan watched Alexander closely for the chance to present Janus's gift. His opportunity finally came when Alexander wandered off alone and approached the bargain bins.

"Excuse me, are you perchance Alexander Harris?" he asked

"It's just Xander and who wants to know?" the teen asked suspiciously.

"I'm Ethan. I'm the proprietor of this establishment. I believe I have a note and a package for you."

Ethan promptly led him to the counter and passed him the note. A simple card stating : I don't owe anyone. –C. He then pointed Xander to a large boxed costume. As Ethan watched him gape in amazement, he slid a piece of parchment towards him. "It's already been paid for. Sign here."

After Ethan closed the store he laughed. A distraction and some misdirection and a soul was signed away that easily. He wondered who the C stood for. _Probably some girl_.

He dismissed the thought as he walked to the back of his shop. He had a ritual to prepare. With the task given to him by Janus completed he knew he held Janus's favor. This night was going to be magnificent.


	2. Chapter 1

(A/N): I apparently didn't adjust the timeline of Buffy, only Stargate. Sorry for the mistake.

Chapter 1 (Halloween / First Commandment)

Darth Vader abruptly found himself surrounded by a mob of hostile creatures. He Force pushed away those closest while drawing his lightsaber. The largest, a snarling horned woman, clumsily charged him. He stood still as a statue as she drew closer and then casually lashed out and cut her in half. At this intimidating display, all of the jawa-sized creatures scattered, leaving only a few others warily keeping their distance.

Ignoring the circling creatures, he tried to figure out what was happening. His last memories were of him dying on the Deathstar. Not only was he no longer dying, but he had been transported to this unknown location.

He activated his suit computer and then stared at the display. Apparently, like himself, the Executor had been transported to this location. It had been miraculously restored, considering he remembered the ship exploding. He commed the ship, but wasn't answered. Sighing, he activated his beckon-call to auto-pilot his shuttle to himself.

Vader noticed a few Ewoks and Jawas run by. _Who else had been transported here?_ He gave a general broadcast over all Imperial frequencies. "This is Darth Vader. All Imperial personnel converge on my signal."

Within a minute a large metal stormtrooper flew in. Vader mentally shrugged. "General Rom Mohc reporting for duty my lord."

Vader had him organize the stormtroopers that were trickling in. As he watched they established a perimeter and began patrolling. They soon began escorting in a number of engineers and pilots. Most of them had a patch signifying they had served aboard either the Executor or the Deathstar.

He was pulled from his thoughts as a voice he recognized hailed him. The speaker was a tall, willowy woman with pale blue skin and shoulder length shimmering white hair. She was wearing a brown uniform with a high collar and covered in pockets.

"Dr. Qwi Xux. I presume you find yourself stranded here without memory of how this came to pass?" Vader addressed the woman. He didn't wait for her reply. "No matter, I have a shuttle inbound. An assessment of our situation can be made on board my ship."

The shuttle arrived soon afterwards. Vader was glad no one wasted time talking, sometimes having a murderous reputation was very useful. As the shuttle landed he saw a woman in a red dress run away, screaming something about demons. _Clearly this planet has yet to achieve flight_.

Piloting the shuttle was soothing. Soothing enough he wasn't too upset his earlier assumption was clearly wrong, if the number of satellites in orbit were any indication.

Irritated over the entire situation, Vader addressed everyone as soon as he had landed. "Dr. Xux I want you to conduct a full planetary survey of the planet below as well as the rest of the system."

He turned to the other officer. "General Mohc, you are in charge of the men. Conduct a full inventory of everything onboard. I want to know what assets are available."

As Vader waited for the preliminary reports he frowned. He ignored the slight increase in pain caused by his scar tissue as he thought furiously. Even from orbit he could feel the Force signature of the planet.

There were both light and dark nexuses scattered across the planet. The strongest dark side nexus just happened to be the area in which they had all appeared. It's strength rivaled the Valley of the Sleeping Kings on Korriban.

A few minutes later he was impatiently listening to the reports. The sensors didn't detect any other ships or imperial comm signals in the system. The Holonet wasn't available, so he wasn't anywhere near the Empire.

The scans of the planet below indicated an average world with a slightly high concentration of water and the presence of nuclear and electrical power. Given the knowledge that the planet below possessed nuclear power he was glad to hear that the ship could move even if it couldn't do much else.

Vader ordered Mohc to have the ship moved to the nearest uninhabited planet. While they were underway, Vader contemplated their situation. The ship was in perfect condition, with every part factory new.

Further the ship was fully provisioned; better than ever before, with every storeroom filled to capacity. With a current crew of less then fifty the supplies would last for millenia.

The hanger bays were completely full as well, containing several thousand various starships and vehicles, most of them TIE variants. There was a fully furnished maintenance bay and his personal hanger had a full engineering bay.

The only thing missing was the rest of the crew, although there was a full complement of droids. Oddly there were also thousands of Viper Probe Droids aboard along with hyperspace pods for each.

Deciding on a course of action, Vader turned to address Mohc. "General, you will head down to the planet below and supervise the installation of a Shield Projector Garrison Base. We will need to secure a base of operations. Afterwards we can see about making contact with the unknown planet."

Next he turned to Dr. Xux. "You will be repurposing many of the droids to help crew the ship."

* * *

Elsewhere a heavy set bald man glared has his phone. He just knew it wasn't going to be good news. "Hammond here." He paled as he listened. "If this is a Halloween prank I'm going to fire someone."

He thought for a second. "Call in SG-1. Get Chief Master Sergeant Harriman to coordinate with Space Command and NASA. Find out what they know."

A few minutes later Hammond strode into the command room in his airforce uniform. He nodded to the six other people in the room as he sat down. They were all in their airforce uniforms, although one was in a black uniform denoting his status as a technician and the other four were in the olive green of field uniforms and the last was in a standard blue uniform.

He leaned forward on his arm as he addressed the room. "So can someone tell me how the hell we have something from a movie hanging in orbit?"

He addressed the surprised looks around the room. "It's from that Star Wars movie; I took my granddaughters to see it a couple of months back." He turned to the man in the black uniform, who was also wearing a large headset. "So Harriman, what do we know so far?"

Harriman adjusted his glasses as he spoke up. "Sir, NORAD reported that the ship appeared at 1740 without any warning. Within seconds a vessel approximately 40 meters long descended somewhere in southern California and then almost immediately ascended to rejoin the ship in orbit. The ascent was significantly faster than the descent. That was a few minutes ago."

He paused for a moment, listening to his headset. "Sir, the ship is no longer in orbit. Both Space Command and NASA confirm that the ship just vanished. Here is the footage from the Hubble Telescope." Everyone watched in silence as the Super Star Destroyer briefly seemed to stretch before vanishing.

Harriman spoke up again. "Deep Space Command just reported in. The ship appeared over Mars. It seems to be maintaining orbit just over the surface. So far all attempts at communication have not been responded too. DCS says they will be repositioning the Mars Global Surveyor as soon as possible."

The rest of the room shifted at that information. The four in olive uniforms exchanged glanced. One of them, a blonde woman spoke up for them. "Can we narrow down where the second ship went? Maybe find out what they were doing?"

The man in the blue uniform, Major Samuels promptly responded. "Actually, Lt Carter we know where they landed. Wilkins Army Base confirms that it landed northwest of Sunnydale. The only feature of note in that area is the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant. We believe they were scouting and retreated when they realized we had mastered nuclear power. Truly God smiles upon us. Further, seeing as it is on United States soil, it isn't a matter for your team."

The leader of said team, a older weathered man couldn't help himself. "Or maybe they're here to sue for copyright infringement and they were just dropping off the paperwork."

Hammond sighed. "Col O'Neill, please restrain yourself." It was going to be a long night.

Rupert Giles stalked through the streets, wielding a bloody broadsword. He was furious. He had passed so many bodies already. He bitterly regretted every person he was forced to cut down in order to keep making headway. Fortunately the liberal amounts of blood splashed across his jacket and sword warned off most of the creatures.

He wondered where Buffy and her friends were, hoping they were safe and fearing they were not. He wasn't sure what was going on and regretted the time it had taken to draw the relevant information from Cordelia.

Following closely at his heels, Cordelia Chase hugged Giles' spare jacket around her closer and watched in awe as Giles cut a path through the night. _Well color me impressed. Now if only he was like twenty years younger_. "Wait Giles, there's Ethan's Imperial Costume Shop."

The shop itself was empty although a faint haze of smoke hung in the air. Upon entering the office Giles froze, eyes darting back and forth as they took in the scene. At the foot of an altar to Janus was a smoldering body. He barely recognized his old friend Ethan Rayne due to the many runes burned into his flesh. As he studied the room he barely heard Cordelia leave, complaining about the smell.

After a few minutes of study he concluded that the altar was the focus of the spell. He smashed it and sighed in relief when he felt the energy of an unraveling spell. As he turned to leave, he noticed the body clutching a scroll which hadn't burned. He collected the scroll and walked out. At the door he glanced back, "Goodbye Ethan, you should never have come here."

* * *

For Vader, several hours had passed in a blur as he worked on adapting several of the viper probe droids into infiltrator droids. He had already dispatched all of the infiltrator probe droids onboard, instructing them to secure satellites to try to gain some information.

Vader sighed. He had several protocol and tactical analysis droids running a rough analysis of the information already gathered. The information found through their Internet indicated the planet was horribly factionalized and several of the factions possessed nuclear weapons.

At midnight he took a break. He checked up on everyone's progress and noticed that he was the only person still awake.

General Mohc had managed to automate the rest of the base construction. He even had the living quarters finished already and he and the men were using them.

Dr. Xux had finally managed to reprogram the KX enforcer droids to help crew the ship and base alongside the R3 astromech droids. She had designed a procedure and programmed several droids with it. Even as she slept more droids were being altered.

She had also apparently appropriated several hundred probe droids and scattered them throughout the system. Looking at their orders he could see that she was conducting a system survey.

Vader abruptly stood up. He needed advice. He also needed a plan since he didn't have the backing of an empire. He no longer possessed a master, but he might have a potential advisor in his room. Hopefully the Holocron he had once taken from Dooku was still in his chambers.

Upon arriving he would have gaped in shock if he was able. He understood the presence of Darth Andeddu's holocron, but he had never been permitted to take the Telos Holocron out of the Imperial Palace.

Vader carefully picked up the Telos Holocron. It seemed his former master was still available. Even better, the holocron would always serve the user as long as they were found worthy.

Vader carefully activated the holocron and requested the presence of Darth Sidious. As the holocron sorted through the various spiritual imprints housed within Vader felt a wave of energy pass over him.

Xander screamed in agony as every inch of his body felt like it had been set on fire. His scream tore apart the room and vaporized the activated holocron. From the crystalline shards rose numerous dark side spirits. Mere shadows of a true force ghost, they immediately began dissipating without the anchoring capstone.

In a desperate bid for survival the Force impressions drifted into the closest receptacle capable of sustaining them. Xander's screams abruptly stopped as he collapsed as nearly a hundred sith spirits were absorbed through the amulet in his right hand.

(A/N): Xander was the Darth Vader from the Star Wars EU as of the end of 1997. I will be pulling things from later canon _provided it doesn't retcon anything_. This includes the prequel movies. He will have come from Tatooine, but given the Noghri had served him for at least two generations by the Battle of Yavin, he is much older then the prequels depict. The original Clone Wars were fought between actual clones and everyone else. Etc.


	3. Chapter 2

(A/N): At the end of Season One they display the ability to track Apophis' ships from Saturn in real time. They never explain how it works either. But it's canon, so it's included.

Chapter 2

Xander felt like he was drowning in pain. He vaguely remembered how to embrace it, feeding it to the dark side of the Force and use the rush of power to keep his mind intact. As Dark Side energy coursed through his body he realized he couldn't control it. He realized the memories of how to do so were from another life, but desperately drew upon them anyway. In desperation, his mind began integrating all of the new memories directly into his personality. He screamed, half in agony and half in triumph, as his body survived the flood of power.

Suddenly his mind shattered as thousands of years' worth of memories attempted to forcibly integrate themselves. He drifted, swimming through an ocean of memories. Each memory seemed from a different perspective. New thought and urges battered his mind. He realized his original personality was fraying, unraveling with every new perspective. He realized he should be worried, but the thought was lost as quickly as the others.

Eventually the sea of thoughts shuddered all around him. Idly curious, he slowly drifted towards the disturbance. He realized it was a sound. It was a distorted echo, unintelligible and yet oddly compelling. It felt familiar and acted as a siren song, drawing him out of his dreaming.

Xander groaned as he stood up, _did he get drunk last night?_ He could here Willow's voice frantically calling for him over the comm.

"Willow." Xander's voice boomed out. Was that his voice? _What happened?_ He shook his head. "Hey, I'm here, just don't know where here is."

"Oh thank god!" Willow started throwing questions at him. "Xander I've been trying to call you for over an hour now. Why are you still using the voice changer? Do you know where all these robots came from?"

"What…" Xander trailed off as he remembered more of last night. His mind was a mess and he was going to have to do some serious meditation to sort all of his disjointed memories. Even the thought of meditating was an odd one. "Willow, breath. Wait a second. I'll call you right back."

Xander ended the call and looked around. His room was completely destroyed and he could see the remains of the Telos Holocron. His suit computer confirmed what he feared, he was still in Darth Vader's crippled body.

He also had a notification that the garrison base had been completed and only needed a final system's check before becoming fully operational. The clock revealed it was only three in the morning. He likely had a few hours before the others woke up.

He realized that everyone on his ship would be regaining their memories. He felt a spike of rage at the thought of losing his ship. An new thought whispered through his mind. He needed to make sure they didn't try to take over.

He strode through the ship, grimacing from a massive headache. _He would need to meditate as soon as possible_. He rapidly typed out orders as he made his way back to the hanger. Without an actual crew, he would have to rely on droids.

He ordered the Enforcer droids to disarm everyone but him. He activated several of the viper probe droids and had them back up the Enforcer droids as well as lock down the ship.

Xander suddenly paused. Those thoughts were very not like him. He winced as his headache spiked and the thought was forgotten.

Xander then headed towards the officer's quarters. He commed Willow while walking. "I'm on my way. Just hang tight."

He left the comm on as he hurried towards Willow. He made reassuring noises as he began answering her flood of questions. When he finally got to the room Willow was in, she had fallen into shocked silence.

Xander paused looking at her. "Willow?" The woman before him resembled a cross between Willow and Dr. Xux. It was Willow, but her frame was taller and more delicate. Her eyes were also bright blue and her hair while still red, had been turned into feathers that only reached her shoulders. She stared, wide-eyed, at him for a moment.

"Wait, so let me get this straight. During Halloween, we all turned into our costumes. But afterwards you didn't change back. And you got a spaceship and a base now and more stuff with your costume. Which you also still have. And you really need my help", she finished quietly.

"Now, more than ever. And Willow, you didn't change back either."

Dealing with Willows initial panic had been easy. Xander had held her and assured her that she looked great until she calmed down. That part had been easy enough. He wasn't sure if it was his new memories or her new body, but it was like he was seeing her for the first time. Willow really was quite pretty.

Xander restrained himself from going beyond soothing Willow. While trapped within his suit, there was no point. Besides, there were other problems that demanded his attention.

"So how did you end up in a Dr Qwi Xux costume?"

Willow seemed to freeze for a second. When she spoke it was low and embarrassed. "Buffy convinced me to try to dress different. So we went back and I got a matching costume."

Xander hugged her a bit tighter, very careful of his new strength. He really had to deal with the other people, he couldn't leave them under guard for too long without problems. Unfortunately his worsening headache didn't leave him any choice. Until Xander managed to meditate, he wouldn't be fully functional.

Xander decided he needed to get the meditation out of the way. He didn't trust his judgment while under this much pain. They barely made it back to his meditation chambers before the pain caused him to collapse.

He barely had time to order the droids to report to Willow while he was out. He also gave her control of the comm network before he began.

For Xander, the meditation was a revelation. He could feel the power that came with the dark side of the force. He reveled in not feeling helpless for the first time in his life. As he began to integrate all of memories, he felt himself changing. As he changed the power began to feel suffocating. He half-recalled a voice lecturing him, _If you do not master the dark side, it will master you._

Xander tried to slow the integration and realized he couldn't. He immediately panicked. In desperation he flailed about him with the Force when he felt it. A beacon of warmth and kindness, love and concern, and all of it directed towards him. He realized this was what had brought him back the last time. He reached out and grasped it, using it as an anchor as he waited an eternity until the process had finished.

He remembered being Xander Harris. He also remembered Darth Vader's life in its entirety, including his death. The memories of dozens of other sith were also present. Although they were faded, the sheer bulk of them had a profound influence on the formation of his new personality.

Xander groaned as he came out of his meditation. He looked towards Willow and saw her still sitting beside him. Her eyes were closed and she seemed at peace. Even as he watched she opened her eyes and looked at him.

"What happened? Are you alright? I could feel it. It was all dark and scary. And it seemed to get spookier. And then it just seemed to get warmer and, and it was nice." Willow trailed off as she blushed.

"I am no longer the Alexander Harris you knew. I am more. But in all the ways that are important, I remain. However, I named myself Xander once in defiance of my past. I now name myself again in honor of my future. I am now Darth Xander."

Darth Xander looked at her calmly as Willow seemed to freeze in shock and then give a timid smile. He answered the question in her eyes. "Yes, I still consider you my best friend. And yes, I still need your help."

He checked the time, ignoring her sigh of relief. Only an hour had passed, he should have plenty of time still. "Come, we should go to the barracks. It will be easier to deal with them in smaller groups. And the stormtroopers are the more immediate threat."

Oddly enough, the stormtroopers weren't any trouble. They also didn't have a second personality. He probed them through the Force and found out that they had replaced the original host. The fragmented memories of the host only seemed to cover a few years, usually less then a decade. He felt sick as he realized that the hosts most likely had been children.

He wondered if why he had been changed if he kept his memories. He also wondered why Willow had partially changed while only keeping faded memories of Dr Xux.

The pilots and engineers proved to be similar cases as the stormtroopers. They were all formally children. Xander suddenly recalled how many Star Wars themed costumes he had seen last night and wondered how many others were changed.

General Rom Mohc proved to be different. He was like Willow, partially changed, although mostly just gaining in stature. A Force probe revealed that he was originally Warren Mears, a classmate of theirs. He seemed to think of himself as Warren Mohc now.

Warren hadn't taken any time at all to agree to joining Xander. Other then the initial panic of waking up facing Darth Vader, he had loved the idea. He was enthusiastic about learning the Star Wars technology and being a general.

Some questioning had revealed that his costume was a custom job built in collaboration with Ethan Rayne the owner of the costume shop. Most of the others probably had gotten costumes from their as well. He answered all of his questions promptly and respectfully. Xander was satisfied, he really hadn't wanted to use the more harmful version of Force drain on him.

Xander decided to have them solve his most pressing problem, staffing the Executor. He told about what he needed them to do and then implanted a lot of information using Force drain. He left them both sleeping off the headaches caused by the process.

He had several preparations to make before returning to Earth. He left them a protocol droid and went to his personal hanger. By the time they woke up and made their way over, he was nearly finished.

Xander grinned as he felt their amazement. "Welcome to my personal hanger. Apparently Vader liked to collect and modify starfighters. As soon as I've finished installing this cloaking device, we can head back."

He handed them some tools. "Come help me install the extra generator. I don't like the idea of not having shields when cloaked."

He grinned as they looked at the equipment. "I implanted my knowledge of Imperial technology when I gave you Galactic Basic and Aurebesh. You should know nearly as much as me now."

Between the three of them, they were finished in under an hour. After they were done Xander looked around the hanger, admiring his collection. He sighed when he looked at the wreckage that used to be his TIE Phantom.

Before they left, Xander transferred everyone else to the garrison base. He informed them that he'd return soon. He also left them access to the news feeds his infiltrators were monitoring.

* * *

"So, report." Hammond demanded.

"The unknown ship in question has remained stationary over Mars since arriving there. There is a large structure being assembled directly below the ship. Analysts believe it's building a base." Harriman replied.

"Analysts? And unknown? I thought it was the ship from the movie? I looked it up and it was called the Executor."

"Sir, we have begun transferring in personnel who are…extreme fans of Star Wars, but preliminary questioning reveals it isn't the Executor. If you look over here, the ship emblem is different." Harriman explained as he pointed towards a projected image of the ship.

One of the men who hadn't spoken before wandered over. He had almost shoulder length brown hair and glasses even larger then Harrimans. "That's the symbol of Janus, the roman god of duality, transition and time." He looked through the window to the gateroom. "He's also the god of gates and passage."

"So he was sent by some roman god..." O'Neill trailed off.

"What is the possibility that this is a Goa'uld?" Carter finished the thought.

The last man spoke up then. He was large and bald, with a golden symbol branded into his forehead. His voice was calm as it answered. "Very low. The Goa'uld do not possess any ships even a tenth of that size. Also, the architecture is unlike that of any Goa'uld I have heard of."

"Thank you Teal'c."

* * *

Their arrival back in Sunnydale wasn't pleasant. They had parked at the abandoned factory and called Giles. He had been surprised to hear from them and promptly drove over.

While they waited Xander had sent out dozens of Viper Probe Droids to scan the town. He was primarily interested in anything related to Star Wars. However, he also knew he was going to need a real spy network.

The conversation with Giles had been very unpleasant. Not only had Buffy been killed, but apparently none of their changes could be reversed.

Hearing that Buffy had been killed was tragic. Despite his new personality, much of the original Xander remained. And Xander had been close the Buffy. Because of the Sith part of him he didn't want to mourn, he wanted vengeance.

Warren hadn't been affected since he didn't know her. Willow on the other hand, had been her best friend and had started crying. Xander had felt guilty when he realized that he had been flying away while Spike had been killing her. That guilt swiftly turned into anger. Spike had apparently left town afterwards, which was the only reason he had not immediately gone on a rampage.

Xander realized that he could do something about vampires with his technology. He immediately began planning out how to murder all of the vampires in the entire town. He called it Operation Slayer.

The revelation that he had been tricked into signing away his future to Janus was terrifying. Being declared a champion of a god did not sound like a fulfilling job. The knowledge of what Janus had done with both was equally terrifying, if in a different way.

Being outside destiny had sounded great at first to Xander. "No fate, but what we make," Xander had grinned. _Maybe I should have gone as a John Conner_. The fact that due to Janus using his fate, champion status and some kind of collective psychic resonance to turn him into a powerful cripple with a sweet ride was not nearly so great.

Giles had waxed poetic about energy exchanges and balancing gifts and other mystical terms. But Xander knew what all that meant to him. He had paid a very high price. Maybe unintentionally, but he had still paid it. And with it he had purchased a chance to change the world. But it was only a chance and he would have to be careful not let it be taken away.

The fact that other beings were now going to pay attention to him due to his status was definitely a cause for worry. Xander regretted getting the others caught up in his mistakes. He resolved to make sure their sacrifice wasn't in vain.

When he had asked about the spell he had found out several things. It had been the Ritual of Janus that was used and it was normally temporary. Due to his status, his change and anyone tied in was potentially permanent. He would also be unable to use the ritual again on himself, although his status as a champion of Janus may enabled him to cast it.

In the meantime he had tasked a dozen Vipers to conduct sweeps across the graveyards and assassinate any vampires encountered. He absolutely loathed vampires. The droids blaster cannons were strong enough to kill a vampire with a single shot and their scanners were able to notice them as they were unearthing. However, the droids weren't designed for real combat.

He had later approached Giles and Ms. Calender about his plans. They both were very enthusiastic about Operation Slayer and promised to help him. He was very happy that Ms. Calender seemed to be keeping Giles from sinking into a depression.

They also helped file the paperwork get all of them emancipated. Following that Xander and Willow both registered for homeschooling. Neither Xander or Willow could attend with their appearance.

Warren would continue to attend for now. His goal was to find a few others to recruit for Xander's science division. He was supposed to concentrate on the students who stood out as nerds.

Xander had had an epiphany when he was integrating all of his memories. He had realized that a few students seem to exhibit superhuman levels of proficiency in certain fields. He theorized that the Hellmouth provided a spark of mad insight into those whose minds were focused enough. He needed to find them.

The meeting with Mrs. Summers had been mentally exhausting. She had been terribly skeptical at first, but accepted the evidence eventually. Afterwards she had been both very grateful to him and Willow for being Buffy's friends and furious at Giles for dragging her into that world. She had appreciated Willow grieving for her daughter, but hadn't wanted anything to do with 'their world' as she phrased it.

* * *

Ted felt fulfilled as he lay in bed charging. He had found his wife again. She was now working at the museum. She had changed her name again, but he would recognize her anywhere. He bet she had forgotten him again.

He looked forward to getting her to come back home where they would be happy together. She would have to learn to stay home again. Hopefully it would be several decades before she died and left him again.

* * *

Lilah Morgan was nervous as she drove up to the abandoned factory in Sunnydale. _This was it_. This would be her first big move since she had been promoted to Senior Associate.

As she walked to the front door she reminded herself that she was armed with several pistols. She only uncomfortably aware they would useless against many supernatural beings. Being assigned to the Special Projects Division of Wolfram and Hart was frequently quite dangerous. And one of the most dangerous parts of that job was approaching new clients.

"Excuse me, is there a Mr. Alexander Harris present?"

When he stepped forward, Lilah was glad she had dressed in a black suit. She briefly paused, but didn't let her shock at seeing Darth Vader stop her pitch.

"I'm Lilah Morgan. I'm a lawyer with Wolfram & Hart. I'm here to propose a business deal."

"I go by Xander. How did you find me?" _He even had the voice_.

"Seers predicted the rise of a new power in Sunnydale. I paid a team of diviners to locate it and they promptly had seizures. By tracking what triggered their fits I used process of elimination to narrow the field down. Several teams later, well here we are."

"Why?" _That breathing was a lot more intimidating in person_.

"The firm is always looking for more clients. In return for your patronage we offer you our services in anything that you require."

"And how might we conclude such a deal Ms Morgan?"

Lilah grinned as she pulled a roll of parchment from her purse. "Please, call me Lilah. And I just so happen to have on me a contract stating the standard terms of such a deal."

Lilah handed over the contract which he slowly read through. She waited, firmly resisting the urge to fidget as she waited for his answer. It seemed an eternity before he finally looked at her.

"Agreed." He signed the contract and handed it back.

Lilah wanted to laugh in relief, but restrained herself. _I did it! I managed to sign The Fate Breaker on as a client!_


	4. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The next two weeks were incredibly busy for Xander. He spent long hours conducting business with his new lawyer. With Lilah's aid he had discretely filed a large number of patents and then promptly authorized several business deals. Lilah was given power to make more as needed. He felt she was reasonably trustworthy.

He was now the proud owner of the former Calax Research and Development facility. The newly renamed Xander Research and Development Labs had then managed to buy all of the property surrounding the former CRD building.

Mostly consisting of old warehouses and cheap housing, they were scheduled to be replaced. Already a construction company had started working on his new mansion. For now he was renting a very nice hotel suite. Eventually Xander planned on constructing a full industrial complex within the heart of his new compound.

Xander had another company working on creating another XRD facility and personal mansion in Los Angeles. It would primarily serve as a closer link to Wolfram and Hart and Lilah had been the one to lobby for it. After all the work she had done on his behalf, it was an easy enough concession. Besides, he was sure he'd find a use for it eventually.

Interestingly, it seems the Viper Droids patrols of the graveyards had several side effects. The sounds of their repulsorlifts now seemed to terrify the local vampire population. They also seemed to largely avoid the graveyards now. Since he had a few of them guarding his newly acquired property they had also taken to avoiding that entire neighborhood.

The probe droids had also quickly swept the entire town and had only located a single droid. Only upon picking it up had their mistake been revealed. It wasn't a droid. It was some kind of human replica and judging from it's components was from the 50s. The technology was both insanely advanced and incredibly primitive. He had immediately tasked Willow and Warren to study it and told Lilah to get them everything they needed.

* * *

For Lilah Morgan the past two weeks had been exhilarating. The heady euphoria of managing to sign on a client that had even the Senior Partners nervous had been amazing. Then had come the actual conducting of his business.

Darth Xander turned out to be a dream client so far. He had promptly filed over half a dozen patents. Patents which had every major corporation in the world interested. He had access to some pretty amazing technology if her engineering contacts were to be believed. He had then just given her a list of what he wanted.

Sure, he dressed as a reject from those popular movies a few months back, but that didn't matter as long as he wanted to remain out of the public eye. In fact, thanks to his avoidance of any attention she had ended up becoming the unofficial face of XRD Labs. He had refused any publicity or meetings with anyone other then her. It had quickly become known that she was the person to approach about any licensing deals.

Lilah's reputation had skyrocketed. She was definitely a rising star and on the fast track to becoming the new vice president of her division. The number of favors she was now owed were substantial.

The best part had been the level of trust he had shown her judgment. It was wonderful and she had been determined to not disappoint him. She had been in her element as she spun an entire web of trade agreements and back door deals to meet all of his demands and then some.

Oh, he still kept an eye on her. She had no doubt that her new bodyguard reported back to him. However, it was discrete and adaptable and didn't seem to care about how she conducted business on his behalf. It was also seemed to be filled with an endless array of concealed weapons along with the commlink to Xander.

The bodyguard was simply amazing. It was some kind of robot with an illusionary skin. It could change it's appearance at will and she had designed it's current one. Very few people viewed a small petite woman as a serious threat, much less an unarmed one. She had ended up using it as an aide in keeping up with all of her deals on Xander's behalf.

Lilah had ended up having to give him a fairly comprehensive list of potential services he might be interested in. He could definitely afford them and a number of other parties were still expressing interest in his technology. If he wanted to keep official financial transactions to a minimal, she would need to know what else he was interested in. High end industrial and scientific equipment was very tame compared to what else Wolfram and Hart could offer or subcontract.

* * *

For Warren, the past two weeks had been awesome. First he had gotten to meet Darth Vader. Sure, he called himself Darth Xander now, but it still counted. He had the voice and breathing. He even had the lightsaber. Which was honestly terrifying, but since he lived with all his limbs intact, turned out to be awesome.

Then he found he still had memories on how to use a lot of the Star Wars technology. He had been offered a position in the Empire as well. Xander called it the Sith Imperium, but Warren still thought of it as the Empire. Warren had jumped at the chance to become the first Military Director of Xander's empire.

If all of that hadn't been enough, he had kept some changes from Halloween. He was both taller and more fit. When he had gone back to Sunnydale High he almost hadn't minded given his new confidence and body. Even his former bullies left him alone now.

It was interesting to note that almost everyone had ignored his new look despite some people recognizing him. _Sunnydale Syndrome strikes again_. He snorted as he wondered if Xander and Willow could have still gone to school. The mental image of Darth Vader sitting behind a desk was hilarious.

His task of searching for potential recruits had been progressing slowly. He had only found a couple of candidates, but that may have been because half his mind was on his project.

Given what he already knew about droid technology, Moloch's body was fascinating. He had been studying it ever since Xander had purchased the CRD facility. Xander had physically destroyed the memory core, but he hadn't really been interested in that anyway.

Moloch's body was vastly more primitive then Star Wars technology, but it's abilities were on par with most known war droids. Remarkably, the body of the Ted robot was even more primitive. It's capabilities easily exceeded those of a human though. By replacing components with Star Wars level technology it outperformed the Moloch body in some ways.

He had been ordered to work with Willow in designing a new war droid and he had gotten a little obsessed. He was determined to make this version of the Dark Trooper project a success. He wondered how Willow was fairing with reverse-engineering the Ted robot's brain.

* * *

For Willow the past two weeks was almost perfect. The only thing that would have made it better was if Xander was healed and she could touch him, but he had recently promised that he was working on that.

It was confusing and a bit scary at first. She had woken up in a room that was strange and yet familiar at the same time. She had been panicking until she had managed to call Xander. He had helped her understand the situation. The weird new sort of memories had helped convince her.

When she had felt his emotions it had been incredible. She was slowly progressing in her Force training. It was all about concentration and emotional control. Meditation helped with both. She couldn't wait until she could feel Xander's emotions all the time.

The physical changes had bothered her at first. She didn't like being even skinnier, but at least Xander seemed to like her changes. And bonus, he seemed to notice she was a girl now. So it was overall a positive thing. Or it would have been if not for her hair.

She missed her hair. Her crest was pretty, but it didn't swish when she turned her head. And washing it was even harder now. The absolute worst part had been her parents. They had denounced her new look as the work of witchcraft.

They had first tried to get her exorcised. When it had failed, they had suggested surgery and taken to ignoring her when she refused. When she had brought up emancipation, they had signed the paperwork without a word of protest. That same day she had moved out and moved into Xander's hotel suite. It was a little crowded, but she liked being near him, even if his armor startled her sometimes.

Even worse then all of that was the death of her best friend. She was glad the costume shop guy had died since he took Buffy from her. She had thrown herself into her projects in an effort to avoid her grief. Xander had helped a lot with that.

Most of her time was spent at the XRD Labs. Xander had let her order any equipment she needed and she was currently working on reverse-engineering the brain of the robot Ted. It was amazingly advanced, far beyond what had been available to the Empire according to Qwi Xux's memories. She had only made as much progress as she had thanks to Ms. Calender.

* * *

Janna Kalderash or as she was currently known as, Jenny Calender was very happy. Sure she felt bad about the death of the current Slayer, but they always led short lives. More importantly though was that her life had massively improved since that Halloween.

With the death of Buffy, Angel had sunk into a depression. While she sympathized, since he was trying to be a hero, she was very relieved that she was off the hook from her family. The seers back home had confirmed that there was no longer any eminent danger of Angel losing his soul.

The seers had also noticed a rising power that could impact them and tasked her to investigate. The new task was easy enough. Within a few days she had been approached by Xander and Willow for help getting emancipated and home schooled. The presence of Wolfram & Hart had confirmed her suspicions.

Sadly, Buffy's death had also devastated Rupert and she liked him a little too much to allow him to wallow in his guilt. Sadly she didn't seem to be able to stop him. She tried to involve him, but his technophobia kept him from working with Willow like she was doing.

Ted was fascinating to work on. The original Ted had been a genius. The brain was apparently a fiendishly complex network of processor chips spread throughout it's body. It was all run by what resembled a digital imprint of a human consciousness.

* * *

For SGC the past two weeks had been hectic. They had repeatedly attempted radio contact unsuccessfully and were very nervous about their new neighbors. All the transfers to assemble the new team had been pushed through in record time. The team had then promptly spent days arguing and were only now finally presenting their results.

"Sir, this is Lt. Alaric Clemens. He has been fully debriefed and is now leading the new team of analysts." Carter introduced the new man to General Hammond. Alaric was tall and gangly, with bright blond hair and grey eyes hidden behind large glasses. He ignored the presence of the SG-1 team as he started though the window at the stargate.

O'Neill rolled his eyes. "Great. Just what we needed another geek."

Clemens seemed to catch himself and saluted before beginning his presentation. "Sorry." He cleared his throat nervously as he quickly handed out a folder to everyone.

"The ship is definitely a Super-class Star Destroyer. Based off the readings we believe that it has deployed a Shield Garrison Base to protect the ship. That likely means they aren't intending to move the ship anytime soon."

There was a pause as everyone read through the briefing packet. There was increasing disbelief at the findings. Clemens attempted to address each comment as they were made.

"Over 5000 weapons!"

"Yes, although those are actually turrets. They primarily consist of turbolaser and heavy turbolaser batteries, which consist of groupings of 2 to 6 individual guns." Several people paled at the news that the ship actually possessed at least twice as many weapons as previously thought.

"300+ small craft?!"

"That is the minimum number listed. However, it is generally agreed that over 2000 TIE fighters can be stored onboard."

"38,000 storm troopers with ground vehicles?"

"Yes, it's supposed to be an army capable of a full planetary invasion. The number of walkers and other craft was never listed. My team does believe it to be less than a thousand."

"Garrison Bases?"

"It is a fully deployable fortress capable of housing thousands of soldiers and dozens of vehicles. It will possess energy shielding and defensive laser cannons. Based on lore and the Mars footage we think they can be up and running within a day. The ship should only have at most two more in storage."

Eventually the questions tapered off as each answer seemed to make the situation grimmer. Finally Hammond addressed Clemens. "Is there any good news?"

"Yes sir, based upon the fact they haven't attacked yet, they are not following Imperial doctrine which was to contact the leaders and bomb the planet until they give up. The ship symbol is unknown and from what the images show we believe it's a standard model so its capability are at least known. "

"Lastly, given how they appeared and aren't responding, they may be having problems and that's why they retreated. If the ship was heavily damaged it would explain their use of a Shield Base."

"Well, I guess it's a good thing NASA is getting ready to take a closer look." Hammond answered the puzzled looks from the rest of the room. "The president wants us to make contact before anyone else finds out about it. Since they aren't responding to radio calls, NASA is preparing an additional Mars Rover."

* * *

Riley and Forrest cautiously made their way across the UC Sunnydale campus. Their instructions were to capture one of the flying droids, which a report had labeled Viper Probe Droids, for study. The drones were only seen to be targeting vampires and so should be possible to ambush.

Several other pairs had been sent out to cover all of the graveyards. It seemed like everyone at the base had been mobilized. The rest of the personnel had been organized into a large reserve force.

They quickly made their way over to their designated graveyard. The droids only seemed to sweep the graveyards a few times per night and they wanted to be setup well beforehand. They had both been briefed on what little information was known and had watched the movies. They hoped their taser blasters would disable it.

A few hours later a probe droid wandered into view. It didn't seem to be paying them any attention and they both carefully aimed their taser blasters at it. The arcs of electricity never reached it. They seemed to disperse against a shimmering energy field they hadn't noticed before. They barely saw it spin to face them before their vision flashed bright red.

Back at the XRD compound Xander received an alert as several of his droids came under attack. Watching the recording he watched as several droids were struck by ion bolts and then the droids and the backup droids killed the attackers.

He saw the droids move to collect the bodies and equipment to bring back as per their standing orders. Ion rifles had been unexpected. _How much more technology did I miss_?

He was about to turn away when he received another alert. He watch through the various viewpoints as a large group of people attacked the droids. Well organized and trained he noticed. They also seemed armed with an impressive array of conventional weapons.

* * *

Back within the Initiative Compound Dr. Walsh continued to monitored her soldiers. She had witnessed the deaths of over a dozen of her men without any reaction other then issuing new orders. "Reserve, move in. Use of heavy weapons has been authorized. Make sure you get me samples."

Dr. Walsh regretted the loss Riley and the other soldiers she had been experimenting on. The various drug therapies had been too early to show any conclusive results. She would have to start all over.

Once she received confirmation that the reserve unit had made it's way successfully back she went down to meet them. She took the few samples they had grabbed and went to her lab.

A few hours later Dr Walsh was furious. The pieces her men had salvaged from the droids were useless. She had reviewed the videos and knew her men hadn't done that much damage. Just like in the movies, they must possess a self-destruct mechanism and a powerful one at that.

It wouldn't be worth it to attempt to acquire another droid. Fortunately she knew where they came from. XRD Labs had appeared at the same time as the droids. She had had a few men stake it out and they had reported hearing the distinctive sound of the droids coming from behind the compound walls.

An open assault would be foolhardy given the losses she had already taken. No, she needed a specialist at bypassing high tech security. She needed a professional thief. She picked up the phone. "Col Kennedy, I have located something of great interest. Acquiring it though may prove somewhat problematic. I believe the services of Ms Raiden will be required again."

* * *

Xander growled as several droids were destroyed under sustained fire. He watched as the people rapidly retreated with several pieces of scrap from his droids. _I don't know who they are, but they are going to regret this_.

He rapidly began typing orders as he strode to his shuttle. He had a lot of preparations to make if he was going to destroy his newest revealed enemy. He left a note for Willow and placed the compound on alert, ordering all the droids to guard the compound before he left. He also placed a call to Lilah. "About that list of services you sent me..."

Over the next two days Xander's forces prepared to wage war. All of their tasks had been completed. The engineers had stripped out the cloaking field generator and installed it inside an Imperial Landing Craft. The pilots had removed the ion cannon in order to install a few additional anti-personnel turrets. The stormtroopers had mounted several E-Web repeating blasters and a concussion shield generator on repulsorlift sleds.

In the meantime Xander had driven into Los Angeles. He had arranged for an entire slew of mystical procedures for himself. Between the procedures and the recovery time, he would be ready when his forces were.

That evening Darth Xander laughed freely for the first time. He was whole once again! The procedure was worth every cent he had spent on it. He turned and looked in distaste at his former cage. He used Force lighting to melt the armor into slag. After a brief hesitating, he grabbed the right glove, all that remained, before laying back down.

The various skill implants had taken the bulk of the time. He had passed on the physical augmentations, just wanting to enjoy being whole for now. It was almost midnight before he made the drive back to Sunnydale.

He made it in time to see the Landing Craft landing. It had ended up making a second trip in order to ferry a full hundred probe droids. As soon as it landed he activated all of the droids and ordered them to provide air support. The troops quickly boarded the Landing Craft. They began warming up the heavy equipment during the short flight.

From on board the craft, the facility was easily located. The unique energy signatures of their ion weapons giving them away. The powerful sensors mapping out the entire facility within seconds.

Xander looked over the data before snapping out orders. He sent out the bulk of his droids to guard the various entrances to the facility. They were scattered throughout a large area, one of them was even within a fraternity house, which thankfully seemed to be currently empty. He assigned himself and the stormtroopers to assault a large entryway, large enough for vehicles.

The actual assault proved to be anticlimactic. The concussion shield generator stopped all of the projectile weapons perfectly. With his lightsaber, he enjoyed batting away the few ion bolts they shot at the group.

From behind him the stormtroopers easily gunned down all resistance and the E-Webs took care of any attempt at using cover. The lights turned off and all the doors locked as the infiltrator droids took control over the system.

Once he had broken the resistance he began hunting down any remaining personnel. He had the stormtroopers stun anyone who surrendered and had the probe droids backing them up. The Landing Craft's sensors made sure they didn't run into any ambushes.

It was over within an hour. The sweep was clean and the Landing Craft hadn't had to use any of it's weapons. He ordered them to strip everything and bring it back, no matter how many trips it took. He had prisoner's to interrogate.

Xander was still angry and didn't bother waking any of them up. He violently mind probed the first prisoner he reached, mercilessly digging through his thoughts for the information he wanted. He repeated the process with each of the other prisoners, leaving the now identified Dr Walsh for last. He took the longest with her, seeing as she was the project leader.

Afterwards Xander stood still, pondering the new information. It seems that he was now up against a branch of the government. His plans were still salvageable, but would have to be accelerated.

* * *

As if Janus was mocking his plans, the next day was an unending string of bad news. First the police had dropped by. Apparently Giles had both been killed and Jenny had gone missing. The police had found several papers from XRD in Jenny's possessions, hence the questioning. Apparently they were wondering if she had drugged Giles, given he had been covered in blue goo, before fleeing.

Willow had apparently woken up in time to overhear the last part. She had been distraught and while he had enjoyed holding her, crying was not what he was wanting her to be doing in his arms. She had been devastated and while hopeful, neither of them expected to hear from Ms Calender again.

The loss of Jenny combined with Willow's grief would slow his plans at the worst possible moment. Her grief had overshadowed her joy at his restoration. Even worse, Warren had become friends with them and had become distracted by their plight as well.

That afternoon, he had been invited down to city hall to meet with the mayor. The meeting was aggravating. Mayor Wilkins was excessively and relentlessly cheerful. He was also incredibly well informed.

If he had still been Xander instead of Darth Xander, he most likely would never have picked up on the all of the undercurrents in the meeting. Several times throughout the meeting the mayor subtly threatened him with bureaucratic harassment and assassination.

After a long and frustrating meeting Xander was finally able to reassure Wilkins that he had no plans on making any large scale changes to the town. Fortunately he didn't have to lie, Operation Slayer had died with Giles and Jenny. His vendetta against vampires seemed petty in the face of his plans.

Besides, his plans had always been to establish a base off of Earth. He had no wish to be confined to a tiny corner of the galaxy for longer than necessary. For now though he needed the resources of Earth.

He did end up getting zoning permits to build his compound as well as a promise from Wilkins to help steer the government's attention away. Although the last part was as much for the mayor as himself.

As if to cap the day off that night the base was assaulted. The alarm woken him up just as he had fallen asleep. Comming the trooper in charge of the guard, he had demanded a report.

"Sir, it's a woman. She broke into the facility, bypassing every alarm. The sensors picked her up and a droid went out capture her. She used some kind of ion weapon on it that didn't register on the sensors. We are sending a squad to intercept her now. She's making her way to the main labs."

Xander eagerly jumped out of bed, not caring he was only half dressed. He summoned his lightsaber as he ran out of his room. "I'll be right there, do not engage her unless she tries to escape."

Soon enough he felt the presence of the intruder even as he felt some of his men get killed. Their comm when dead even as he cut his way through the walls towards her. He burst through the wall to see the whole squad laying smoking on the floor and a woman standing next to a computer. She had her hand on the screen, which was flashing through windows.

The woman was fairly young with long dark hair and wearing a tight black outfit. She raised an eyebrow at his lightsaber, but didn't stop what she was doing. He recognized a power similar to Mechu-deru. "You should not have come here."

She looked up, "I'm almost finished. You know how it is. Girl's gotta eat."

"I'm afraid I can't let you have that information." Xander watched for a moment longer. "How are you doing that?"

"I can do a lot more than that." She suddenly darted forward and swung a hand at him. When he blocked he felt himself absorb a jolt of electricity coming from her fist. He blocked several more blows trying to understand how she was shocking him. _Maybe some kind of taser wired into her gloves?_

She seemed to be getting frustrated as the fight progressed. "Why aren't you toast?"

"Because your taser isn't enough to actually burn." Xander stood back. He could feel she had something else hidden and he was curious.

"We'll see about that." She then pulled her gloves off and punched out with both fists. He grabbed her arms and felt electricity pouring into him. He activated Force drain and felt the energy being absorbed. _So she's a living generator_.

"Like I said, your little taser trick isn't enough." Suddenly he felt the electricity reduce to a trickle. Her arms wrenched to out of his grasp with incredible strength and her following kick sent him flying.

"I wonder," Xander mused out loud before sending a stream of Force-lightning at her. She absorbed it and just stood there staring at him in shock.

"You're like me!" She exclaimed excitedly. She stayed where she was, smiling at him.

"No, I'm better." He suddenly used Force grip and Force drain while she was held. As she collapsed he caught memory fragments from her. The only one that stood out was that she had been sent by Dr Walsh. He ordered her taken to the infirmary and kept sedated.

When he went back to his rooms, Willow was panicking. He quickly cut off her flood of questions. "It was an intruder. She killed a few men, but I took care of it. There is nothing to worry about."

She remained terrified so he carried her to the Landing Craft. "We're going to the Mars base. No one can reach you there." He held her as they flew. She didn't fall asleep until just before they landed. He left her a note after he tucked her in. He had a lot of work ahead of him.

* * *

It took him several days to finish the design for the next stage of his plans. It would have taken longer, but Willow had finally felt well enough to concentrate. She finished in a few hours what most likely would have taken him another week at least to design.

The design was for a modular mobile miniature factory. The molecular furnace was at the heart of his plans. He remembered their potential from the comics. While he wasn't planning on full scale World Devastators, he did plan on imitating their production facilities on a smaller scale. He named them Artisans as they would create small personal scale items.

The design resembled an enlarged TIE fighter cockpit with four spindly legs coming off it's sides. Solar panels were formed in a crest-like shell on it's back. The window had been replaced by a lamprey like mouth. Small tractor beams mounted on twin whip-like antennae allowed it to gather materials easier.

The best part was that multiple Artisans could combine into a centipede-like creature. He called them Architects because they were capable of creating entire structures. They could also manufacture more complex machinery through an internal assembly line. The networked minds were also capable of much more intricate planning.

The best part was that the Architects were modular. The more Artisans connected the more capable the resulting Architect. More complicated parts required longer Architects. The tractor beams could also be daisy chained together. The resulting beam from the emitter on the 'head' scaled in power with the size of the Architect.

As soon as he was done he checked to make sure the shaping ritual could handle it. The shaping ritual was a very complex piece of magic that he had commissioned. It allowed for moderately large transfigurations of incredible complexity provided a number of circumstances were met. Satisfied with the results, he began his preparations.

Content with the situation Xander oversaw the loading of all his ordered supplies onto the Landing Craft. He missed Willow, she was his anchor in all of this chaos. Looking forward to seeing her again, he hummed a cheerful tune as he took off.

* * *

Willow had spent the first two days on the base in a daze. She couldn't concentrate through her worries and fears. Her isolation seemed to magnify everything. In an effort to relief the mental stress she began meditating as much as possible. The third day she made a breakthrough.

Willow knelt on the floor and slowed her breathing. Slowly she entered a meditative trance, using the concentration of ignoring the ache of her position to drive herself. She felt herself sinking into her mind. As normal for the past few days she felt like she was drowning in unnamed fears. Suddenly it was too much and she twisted violently away. She tore her way out of her own mind and into another.

She felt herself relaxing as her fears didn't follow her. She smiled as she swam through new memories. She remembered bits and pieces of projects she had worked on before. She remembered the joy of learning and the enthusiasm of solving a problem. She remembered the satisfaction of being part of the Empire. She felt her worries and other emotions fade, washed out in the face of the brilliant focus she used to have.

With a gasp, she woke up again. Her mind felt horribly adrift and she had to forcibly remind herself that she was Willow. She was panting from the focus required to reaffirm her identity settled and remembered with envy the focus that Qwi Xux had possessed. She was busy the rest of the morning working and trying to forget how much she missed the serenity of being Qwi Xux.

Over the rest of the week whenever she began to feel overwhelmed she ended up meditating again. It was disorienting, but each time she could feel her worries and fears weakening. She could feel the jagged edges of her grief hurt that slightest bit less. Combined with the rapidly increasing understanding of the Star Wars technology and it was well worth it.

Her only other anchor was her conversations with Xander. However, they consisted primarily of plans and his latest designs, which she could barely understand at first. After a few days of feeling fairly useless, it suddenly all just clicked. She saw exactly what he was trying to do and how to accomplish it. With her epiphany, it only took a few hours to help him finish the project.

The last day she was busy the rest of the morning looking over various designs with all of the focus that once only Qwi Xux had possessed. She hummed an Omwati lullaby as she finished up some notes to present to Xander.

(A/N): Hadn't realized it stripped out additional spacing. Fixed.


	5. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Xander, despite how much he enjoyed flying, put the Landing Craft into autopilot. Eager to find Willow, he reached out through the Force to find her presence. He failed to find it and used the ships sensors to scan the base. There was only a single lifeform and it was standing still in the hanger. Puzzled he reached out again and jerked back almost immediately. _That wasn't Willow_.

Cautiously, he exited to ship and greeted the person who was impersonating Willow. Her crisp, reflexive salute at his approach confirmed that something was wrong. He ignored her excited babble and suppressed his instinctive flinch when she hugged him. Delicately he reached out through the Force again and wove his way through her mind. What he found was both familiar and utterly alien.

As he went further he realized what had happened. Willow had found out how to access the memories of Qwi Xux through meditation. In her desire to escape her emotions she had integrated those memories. Worse, her subconscious had largely overwritten parts of her personality with Qwi Xux's own.

He was dazed by the revelation even as he grieved for the loss of his friend. _Was this his fault? Did he rely on Willow's help to much?_ Questions and doubts swirled in his mind. Willow was his anchor, without her he felt lost.

He was vaguely aware that she had asked him something. "Yeah, sure. Listen, something's come up. I have to take care of it. I'll be back soon." He hesitated a moment. "Take care of yourself."

Xander forced himself not to break into a run as he made his way back to the ship. The professional salute she gave him as he left made it much harder.

* * *

Gwen woke up to a blinding headache. There was a bright light shining in her eyes and she tried to turn her head away fron it. She began panicking when she realized she couldn't. She quickly realized she couldn't move or feel anything below her neck.

"I see that you're awake." The man she had fought earlier stepped into view. He was smiling, but it looked off somehow. She recognized him, he was the CEO of XRD Labs.

"Yes, I am Xander Harris. Owner of XRD Labs. You really shouldn't have come here. It's not like you had a reason." She tried to answer but realized she couldn't speak.

He seemed to know what she was going to say anyway. "I'm sorry, but no you didn't have a job. Your client was killed the day before. I killed her myself. Not that it makes a difference."

He paused as her thoughts raced. "Shhh, don't worry. Yes, I'm going to kill you, but I made sure you won't feel a thing. Considering how badly my day had gone, I'm really being quite considerate."

His attempts at reassuring her were sincere enough that it made him even more terrifying. She futilely tried to move but her body was as unresponsive as her voice. "Sorry about the paralysis by the way. But if you moved I could end up a mistake. And as for your voice, well screams are very distracting. Can hardly hear yourself think over them."

In despair she cursed ever taking the job. She also cursed Dr Walsh for hiring her. "If it's any comfort, I can assure you that she suffered horribly before dying, although it wasn't for sending you."

She noticed with horror that his arms, now crossed, were dripping with what looked like her blood. He began a mostly one-sided conversation with her as she tried and failed to scream in fear.

"I'm scaring you aren't I? Odd that. You don't seem bothered at all about the four men you killed when you broke in here. People like you never seem to care that they could end up as someone else's victim."

 _Why couldn't he have just killed me?_

"That would have been a terrible waste. You know your biology is fascinating. I can see why Dr Walsh hired you to help her make her ion rifles. Sorry, I mean the Taser Blasters" If the sarcasm wasn't evident enough, his eye roll would have revealed what he thought of that name. She still almost missed it at the realization that he really could hear her thoughts.

 _Why are you doing this to me?_ She screamed at him mentally as strongly as she could.

"I'm sorry. I know I shouldn't be doing things like this. But you see I've recently found myself cast adrift. I lost my anchor and now I find I don't care nearly as much about what I shouldn't do as I ought to. I do still care enough to make sure you can't feel what I'm doing to you."

To her horror he reached up and patted her on her head. It seemed to be meant as reassuring, but the touch of his hand, sticky with her blood, made her want to cringe.

"Dr Walsh had the right idea you know. Combining the effects of several creatures into a single form would create the ultimate lifeform, at least physically. Her problem was in designing it to be independant. I don't know why, she was already working with behavioral control implants.

"Did you know she even referred it it as her child in her notes? Perhaps it was some latent biological reproductive imperative? No matter. I assure you that I am cognizant of the dangers of allowing ones creations no limitations."

"Still, her genius cannot be denied. Her achievements were amazing and I can think of so many uses for them." He stared off into space for a few moments.

She wanted to scream at him to get to the point, but a growing dread kept her from asking even in her mind.

He seemed to be talking more to himself then her. "I have so many ideas. I have knowledge of thousands of creatures and designed for hundreds more. And I know there are litterly thousands if not millions of new creatures for me to experiment on. The things I can make from them."

He turned and smiled down at her, patting her head one last time. "Sorry for getting distracted. It really was rude of me to ignore such an interesting specimen. You can at least take comfort in knowing that it will all be over soon."

* * *

Harriman started the meeting. "NASA has confirmed their plans. They are using the additional funding to upgrade to a Delta III rocket. With the extra lift they are planning on sending a larger base station and adding an additional rover. They hope to be able to make the base station more robust. They will also be carrying a Sagan Institute Box."

"Why? They all speak English in the movies," O'Neill sarcastically questioned.

Clemens glared. "Actually they spoke a language called Galactic Basic. We have no idea what it sounds like. We also know they use a different alphabet called Aurebesh."

Dr. Jackson added in his support. "Even if it did resemble English, exposure to thousands of alien cultures will most likely have turned it into a new dialect."

Harriman continued on, ignoring them. "According to schedule the launch will be within a week. The Rovers should make contact toward the end of January. The public will expect the arrival to be in late April so both Rovers will be available for over three months before the public will expect any images."

Hammond nodded. "Good. Tell them to be extra polite. We already lost our chance with the Nox. We can't afford to lose another potential ally."

* * *

When Xander finally returned to his base on Mars, he felt much better. It felt like a tension he hadn't been aware of had been relieved. As the ship landed he decided to name the base after his birth world. He had hated Tatooine, but the name was fitting. Sandy and barren, never-the-less it was still where he had been raised. And his new empire, the Sith Imperium, would likewise be birthed here.

Determined to make up for lost time, he hurried his way to the hanger. As he had ordered along the way, a space had been cleared out and prepared. He immediately went over to the enormous runic circles painted on the floor and paintstakingly inspected them, a process that took hours.

After making sure there were no errors, he instructed the various supplies moved into designated spots. The hardest part was moving the two TIE fighters into position. With all of his preparations ready, Xander moved to stand on the engraved symbol of Janus in the center of the circle.

While Janus wasn't a traditional choice for most ritual spells, Xander felt he was perfect for this one. The ritual was intending to create a change through transmutation which fit his portfolio. It was also building upon the previous work of Janus. Lastly, as his champion, Xander had to right to call upon him for aid.

It was with these reasons in mind that Xander began the ritual chant. It was with total surprise he found the ritual exploding violently. He screamed as raw divine power coursed through him. It was a mercy when he finally blacked out after several agonizing seconds.

When Xander woke up in his mind with foreign thoughts swimming around the first thought he had was _not again_. He panicked for a moment, wondering if he would finally lose himself. Gradually he realized the thought felt like a circular pattern.

As he focused on it, he realized it was message, repeating itself. "Hello my champion. If you are hearing this, then I am most likely dead. Probably slain by the Powers That Be for mucking up their Shanshu prophecy. That or well anyone else I had managed to upset by disrupting divination for everyone."

"I have made you a Fate Breaker. Your very existance will disrupt plans and prophecy. Because of this there are those who will seek to remove you. Since you can't be predicted I'm not sure when or even if you will ever call upon me. If you are, then you most likely need aid."

"I regret that I will not be around to aid you directly. I have managed to leave you a few gifts. They were hidden in the one place no one could find it, within your own future. Use them well."

"The first is a shard of my power. It is enough to enable you to power the normal spells and rituals you would normally have to call upon me for. The energy contained within is finite and can only be replenshed through mortal worship and prayer. Congradulations on your first steps towards divinity."

"The second is a feel for the dimensions. If you are calling for help like I predicted then this is what you need to know." What followed an incredibly detailed set of rules for interdimensional summoning. They were complicated and full of conditions, but boiled down to the fact that he could pull from dimensions he was tied to easily and could possibly open one more under the right circumstances.

"The last gift is a set of runes. They are inscribed onto your bones to conceal their existance. They will protect you from being viewed by Higher Beings as well as Seers. Since I won't be around the protect you anymore, this is the best I can manage."

The message made him realize that he should definitely summon more help from the Star Wars dimension. Although that idea would keep. First he still had his original ritual to complete.

Xander almost laughed when to turned to inspect the damage to the area. It seemed that his spell had already worked and better then he had hoped. Across the hanger bay hundreds of newly formed Artisan Droids stood facing him. The overloaded ritual had apparently converted every TIE fighter in the hanger.

He ordered them to form up into Architect Droids and then had a number of shuttles ferry most of them to the larger of the two moons above Mars. He ordered them to construct four Deepdocks. The resulting mobile shipyards would be vital to his plans. Their modular nature would allow him to construct any class of ship up to an Imperial Star Destroyer, which was more then large enough currently.

He took the rest to the other major hanger and ordered them to convert all of the TIE fighters in storage into more Artisans. He took the time to send out an order to the pilots to began moving any remaining TIE fighters in the other hangers to that one.

* * *

Willow stretched. She ran a hand through her fringe of feathers and looked at the results of her latest project. She had finally finished reverse engineering the brain of the Ted robot. From her new perspective, she couldn't believe how she had failed to understand it before. Unfortunately, she still had to ask Warren for help in figuring out how to upload the personality matrix. Software had never been her strong point.

She was all too glad to take the call from Xander. His voice sounded weird at first until he explained he had to relay it through a droid as a side effect of something Janus had done to him. She hoped he was alright.

She felt a faint pang of grief when he addressed her formally. She missed their former closeness, although it was closer to nostalgia then true pain. She was glad they were still friends. She hadn't had any in her former life as Dr Xux and Willow pretty much only had Xander left.

Xander apparently was checking up on the status of the brain. She was glad to be able to tell him that it was finished. She wondered what his next project would entail. In her spare time she had been uploading the schematics for the various projects she had worked on at the Maw Installation. The request, when it came, surprised her.

Rebuilding Xander's flagship was a daunting task. It would probably just be easier to build a new ship and scrap the original if the redesign was extreme enough. She was very glad that she had bothered to upload the schematics from her old projects. Building the new ship would require at least two World Devastators. She also wanted to incorporate several ideas from them into the new ship.

As she thought about the ship, she began to get excited. She was also excited to be working with a team. She was going to need a lot of help. She wondered how he would get the people she had requested, but trusted him when he reassured him that he could. She couldn't wait to greet Bevel Lemelisk again. She hadn't worked with Lira Wessex before, but her aid would be invaluable in redesigning the ship. There were several others on the list she was also eager to work with.

* * *

Warren loved Xander as his boss. He had been a little disappointed when he ditched the armor, although he understood why he did. Xander was very generous boss. The budget was enormous and his pay was very high. Although the last part didn't seem to matter so much these days. Flashy cars and nice clothes just seemed so petty now that he had found his passion.

Warren before Halloween had always been fascinated by robots. General Mohc had been working with droids for decades. After the merging the interest had turned into a full obsession.

When Xander called and informed him of his newest project he was convinced that Xander was the best boss possible. He had been tasked to build a set of droids that would masquerade as an alien race and be used as the core of the Sith Imperium. They would fill in for both technicians and soldiers.

Warren had quickly decided on the Givin race. Their mathematical mindset would be easy enough to program and aid their role as technicians. Their exoskeleton and physiology would also be easy enough to replicate with biofibers. The best part was that he could use them to enhance his own pet project.

Warren was still working on the Dark Trooper project. As he applied what he learned from Moloc's body the armor design had grown in stature. As it was, the armor now stood almost eight feet tall. It was powerful and heavily armored and performed very well in simulations.

If he could modify the armor to be used by the Givin race he would be creating, he could strip out both the life support and radiation shielding. The extra room would allow him to install shield generators and a better repulsor engine. The joints could also be slightly restricted if he did the same to the Givin race and allow him to armor them much more heavily.

He was now definitely glad that he had taken a day off to help Willow with her project. She was incredibly intelligent and a joy to work with. It had also saved him from wasting time since he had to redesign so much of the armor anyway.

Warren wondered idly how Xander was planning on providing the list of scientists and engineers he had requested from the Star Wars universe. He sent a text asking for a Givin doctor as well. He hoped Xander managed to persuade them to work together after they were pulled here. It would be a shame to only be able to work with samples.

* * *

Lilah stared at her phone for a moment. Although he was listed under the Special Projects department, this was the first time Xander had made a request that merited that assignment. _What on earth does he want with twenty homeless people?_

Still, he was the client and she didn't bother questioning him. She sent the order to the Special Operations team. There was a fairly large population of homeless people in L.A. and it would be fairly easy for them to gather some.

She didn't have to wait long. At precisely midnight Xander strode into his new industrial complex. It had just been finished and had yet to be used. On the empty factory floor stood a crowd of various homeless people. They were all eating the fast food that had been used to lure them there.

Xander strode directly up to her. He ignored the Special Operatives standing around as well as her small wave to get them to let him pass. "Will any of them be missed?"

She quickly shook her head. "No, they meet all your criteria. They are homeless, willing to follow directions and quite desperate."

"And the rest?"

Lilah swallowed nervously. "All of the costumes have been made to specifications. The props have likewise been made. Everything is as you have asked for, although the quality may have suffered. The changing stalls are also ready. They're a bit crude, but servicable."

She almost sighed in relief when he nodded. Then he turned away to address the crowd and the change was startling. He smiled and it radiated sincerity and goodwill. "Alright, I'm going to shoot a small film and I needed a few extras. So I'm going to be handing out packets and costumes. The changing stalls are over there. Everyone will be paid for their time after the shoot."

As he spoke she saw over twenty people file in. Most of them were in stormtrooper armor, although two of them in black uniforms started setting up some kind of equipment. _Maybe he really is making a home movie? Wouldn't be the weirdest thing I've seen a client do._

She was shaken from her thoughts when he turned to her again. "Please join me in my office."

No soon had one of the operatives closed the door than Xander drew a lightsaber and cut them both down. She froze for an instant and tried to keep her voice from trembling. "The firm it going to end up billing you for them."

"Let them. I want as few witnesses as possible. You are an exception because I need you to arrange things such as this. Now if you'll excuse me."

So saying, he stepped out and addressed the crowd again. "My friends here will hand out the props and scripts to each of you. You have about fifteen minutes to read through it and prepare before the first shooting."

She perched on a chair, waiting to see what he was going to do next. He seemed to meditate for a few minutes before he began chanting. She couldn't make out what he was saying although she saw the symbols he carved into himself clearly. His voice drones and echoed oddly in the room and she found herself relaxing a bit as it continued.

When he stopped she jerked to full readiness. She was startled to see the symbols glow with a dull red light before fading away, leaving his skin whole. There was the very loud sound of a number of weapons firing. The sound was recognizable as stun rounds from her studying the Star Wars movies after taking Xander as a client.

He looked over at her at the noise and grinned triumphantly. When it ended he winked. "I told them there would be a shooting."

Lilah stared. When they left the office she wasn't sure what to expect. She had expected the piles of unconscious bodies laying on the ground. What she hadn't expected was to see the homeless people had all been replaced by their costumes. The cheap paper machete masks were real alien faces and the equipment looked like metal instead of the plastic and styrofoam it had started as. She was so surprised that she almost missed him explaining.

"The spell turns them into their costume temporarily. Everything reverts back eventually. Which is why the techs are making scans of all the props I had you make. I needed accurate scans to attempt to reconstruct most of the materials since they don't exist here."

"A few of them however, should actually remain changed. Those were the people whose sense of self was weak enough that it shattered even under the faded memories they received. It seems that several of them met that condition. Luckily more then enough of the group were that way. As for the rest, well..."

As he trailed off, he held his hands out. A odd glow seemed to extend from them towards the people he had indicated. After a moment they began screaming horribly. They continued to scream as their bodies seemed to wither away. By the time they stopped they all looked like mummies.

He staggered for a second before throwing her a strained smirk. "That always leaves me with a headache. Still, a few hours sleep and I should be fine. Thank you for your help. Feel free to tack on a nice bonus for yourself when you bill me."

Lilah stared in shock as the roof opened and a moment later a starship shimmered into view. _So that's why he needed roof doors!_ The stormtroopers loaded up the few remaining possessed people and equipment into the shuttle before it vanished from view. A few moments later the roof closed again.

As she left she had an idea she needed to bring up the next time she met with Xander. If he could manage to manufacture regular primitive weapons that were better then normal steel he could make a killing. Lilah made a mental note to use that exact phrasing. She figured it might make her idea more appealing.

* * *

Xander dropped off the newly recruited personnel at the Mars base. While most would be working for Willow, Warren's team would be stationed there as well until he was sure they were loyal. He was not chancing the loss of his technological edge.

Then he promptly collapsed in bed to process all of his new memories and skills. He had shored up his own piloting skills with those of the best pilots. Wedge Antilles, Soontir Fel and several others had all been data mined through the use of Force drain. A few of the best warriors from several warrior cultures, including the Sun Guard and Mandalorians, were for the remaining stormtroopers.

The next day Xander met with the pilots. Luckily they were all members of Black Squadron, his personal pilots, and were incredibly loyal as well as decently skilled. They laid on the medical bay beds without question. They were all sedated and he began implanting skills into them with Force drain.

Four of the pilots specialized in fighters and served in pairs as his wingmen. Imperial doctrine had squads normally of four though and they would be flying together from now on. With all of the skills of the best fighter pilots, including himself, it shouldn't take long for them to adapt.

The last pilot was his shuttle pilot. In him he implanted the skills to fly all kinds of vehicles from gunboats all the way up to System Patrol Craft. Given how larger ships were flown by an entire crew there was no point in implanting anything more.

As the pilots were processing their new skills in their sleep, Xander checked up on his Architects. He was pleased to note that dozens of Artisan droids had been completed already. He took his shuttle up and loaded as many artisands as he could. He dropped them off on the smaller moon and ordered them to began processing it into raw materials to speed up future construction projects.

Eventually the materials would be used to create new factories. He would need them to create the pseodo-race of Givins being designed by Warren as well as the Willow's project, which she had whimsically named Positronic Brains. He had kept the name, glad to know she still liked Asimov.

When the pilots woke up he immediately set them to training in their new abilities. He programmed the simulators to test them on several different weapon configurations and vehicles. Seeing as they didn't have any problems he called in the stormtroopers.

Xander quickly implanted in each of them a host of skills from all of the various warriors. He planned to extensively test how well the implantations improved their abilities. He wanted only the best matches to be uploaded into Positronic Brains.

* * *

"Sir, we have a possible situation." Clemens added after SG-1 finishes their report on Argos. He passes out a slim folder to everyone.

"We noticed a new patent being filed for a hologram projector. We traced it and found it's registered to one XRD Communications Inc. That company is linked to a few other companies and all of them have recently filed a number of patents. After studying them we think all of them are based off of Star Wars technology. The company is based out of Sunnydale, which is where the ship appeared above."

"So what are these things?" Carter asked. "I've been reading up on the Star Wars universe, but I don't recognize any of these terms."

"That is because they have been renamed. Further, none of these were named in the movies. The first two, filed three days after the ship appeared we believe are Ferrocrete and Ceramacrete. A week after that we believe either Formax or Foamplas was filed. All of these are very common building materials, equivalent to sheetrock for us. Yesterday another company, XRD Communications filed a patent for a new translation program, a hologram projector, a virtual keyboard and a touchscreen. Earlier today XRD Medical submitted several new medicines and drugs for testing and XRD Engineering filed the following patents: Myloflex, Ferroceramic, Ceramisteel, Ceraglass, Plasteel, supercapacitors, and a solar panel that runs at 18% efficiency."

"That last one doesn't seem that impressive." O'Neill interrupted.

"Our current best is slightly above 12% and it's incredibly expensive and difficult to make. On a practical scale, we can't exceed 10%. The new design is almost twice as good as what we can feasibly make." Carter explained.

"All three companies are owned by XRD Labs which is in turn is owned by one person. Xander Harris, 17 years old, recently emancipated and possessing a GED." Clemens concluded.

"Why wasn't any of this in the news?" Jackson asked.

"It's because all the licensing is being handled by the Wolfram & Hart law firm. All the patents are currently being leased by other companies. Everything is buried under mountains of paperwork. There doesn't seem to be any actual monetary transfers either. We only found this out because we knew what we were looking. We still may have missed some patents."

"SG-1, since you have already been pulled from missions until such time as O'Neill is fully recovered, I want you to initiate contact with Mr. Harris and XRD Labs. Bring Lt. Clemens with you when you leave, his insight could end up being invaluable." Hammond ordered.

"Well people, between XRD and Jackson's theory of Cimmeria the future may be looking up for us. Let's make the most of it."


	6. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Several days had passed and the pilots had all finished running their list of simulations. Based on the results of the hundreds of simulations they had run he was glad to see that the TIE Defender had ranked at the top.

Xander had always been a fan of the TIE Defender. He wanted his empire to be better though. So he started with one and began customizing it. He had removed the hyperdrive completely. It added weight and drew power for no purpose. He hadn't even fully fortified a single planet yet.

Then he had gutted the cockpit and redesigned it to be piloted by only a droid brain. All this had allowed room to install a much larger power generator. With the increased power generation it would be able to fly at more then twice the speed of the older TIE fighter.

He had also replaced the missile launchers with a turret equipped with a small particle cannon. While it couldn't fire very quickly, it had a much more powerful explosion than even a proton torpedo. The reduction in range was made up for by the other weapon replacement. The Long-Range Light Quad Turbolaser that replaced the four laser cannons could shoot incredible far. It was also much more powerful.

To compensate somewhat for the slower firing speed he had permanently incorporated two tractor beams. They were mounted on either side of the top wing pylon. It would allow a pilot to 'hold' an enemy for a moment to make it easier hit with a single volley. Between the more powerful engines and the tractor beam, they could also function as medium tugs. Better yet, with the tractor beams fed back into the engine, it would boost the speed by half again, tripling the speed of a TIE fighter.

He had also thinned the armor down and used the saved weight to switch the ray shields to full deflector shielding. Since his ships wouldn't be using missiles, he saw no reason to allow others to use them against him. Also the deflector shields would provide better protection from debris when working as a tug.

As for the other cockpit changes he had replaced the navicomputer with an advanced targeting computer. He had then replaced the cockpit window with mirrored armored panels. He had still wanted the look of the TIE cockpit.

The last touch was to install sensor clusters on the front of the former window as well as additional clusters on the center of each wing. The additional sensors covered all of the previous blind spots of the original ship.

Saving the final design of the TIE Defender Mk II he turned to the next step of his current project. The expanded alchemical lab hadn't been difficult to setup, since he could order almost everything through Lilah. Building the extensive cybernetics had required diverting an Architect droid, which had slowed other projects down slightly.

What he regretted most however, was the death of so many of his personnel. In order to make the most of his pilots he would be using the neural interfaces from the Shadow Droid project. That required the complete removal of the brain. He was going to skip the alchemical process of imbuing it with the force since they were just going to be copied.

The problem was the remaining stormtroopers. There was no way they could fail to realize the pilots were missing and some at least would draw the right conclusions. They were hardly likely to take the sacrifice of one of their own to create a template for future soldiers well and he couldn't afford any dissension this early. No matter how regrettable, he'd have to sacrifice all of them at once. He was just glad he had kept the scientists and engineers sequestered in another part of the base.

Sighing, Xander called the pilots and stormtroopers down to the medical wing again. From there, everything proceeded smoothly. They eagerly laid submitted, no doubt anticipating gaining some new skill. He almost felt bad about killing all of them and harvesting their brains. He grinned when a thought struck to him. _Does this make me a zombie?_

Thankfully both the cybernetic grafting and the neural mapping didn't have any problems. He had tested it already, but it was nerve-wracking testing to see if the project had succeeded. Given everything he had invested into it, a failure here would setback his empire months if not longer.

The testing showed the positronic brains were everything he had hoped for. The brains could think creatively and adapt to new situations easily. However, they were still missing any shred of humanity. They were ruthless and efficient and their abilities were impressive. He had been worried the template wouldn't carry over all of the effects of the grafting.

Even with the Force, he wasn't sure he could defeat a wing of these new pilots. He carefully compared them all before selecting the one he felt was the best. The testing of the shuttle pilot was much simpler and he too performed amazingly well.

He decided that he needed a name for the combination of positronic brains and altered uploaded minds. He decided to call them War Minds. He wasn't sure how he felt about the stormtrooper test results. There wasn't a clear winner there and he had ended up saving all of them.

Xander had ended up naming each new War Mind by their specialty. He had a Fighter Pilot as well as a Small Craft Pilot. The stormtroopers who weren't named yet, just stored for future consideration.

With his current project finished, Xander decided to see about what else his fledgling empire required. Willow's project had plenty of personnel working on it and would still take weeks to finish. The factories to produce the biofibers and War Minds was coming along nicely. They were being constructed as extensions of the Tatooine base. Progress was slow, but speeding up as the Architect droids up on the Executor converted more TIE fighters.

That left Warren's project. Xander checked up on his progress and read through his notes. He ended up with a few ideas and promptly called Warren. Their discussion lasted over an hour and in the end he agreed to provide a few living Givin specimens for him.

* * *

Lilah picked up her phone at the ringtone of her favorite client sounded. "Lilah Morgan. And how may I be of assistance today?"

She listened to his list of demands, thankful that her bodyguard was recording the call. _Sounds like he's summoning again._ "That can be arranged. I assume you don't want any company this time as well? You know, it would be much easier if you provided some security of your own, at least onsite."

She couldn't help the twinge of nervousness that ran through her as he replied. While he had always been very polite, she couldn't forget how dangerous he was. If the video of him throwing lighting around wasn't enough, last weeks ritual would have reminded her. The look in his eyes as he cut down the operatives was terrifying for it's indifference. So it was with relief that she listened to him agree with her idea.

Sending out the order to Special Operations again, she emphasized the requirements he was looking for. After that she had her guard call the costume department. It dutifully displayed a transcript of his demands as she rush ordered everything for that evening.

That evening she watched as he went through his spiel and handed out what looked like costumes for a horror convention from the crate she had delivered. Although she did notice that a few of them were fairly normal.

She watched with interest as several dozen robots filled the room. The hovering Imperial Probe Droids stayed above head level. She didn't recognize the other droids. They loomed over everyone at over seven feet high. They looked odd, with long spindly limbs and a thick hunched torso.

She was glad Xander had asked for people who were pretty much mentally broken since she didn't think they could fail to notice the clearly inhuman robots otherwise. They followed his instructions well enough however and she gladly followed Xander back to his office. She was glad to be away from those people, their condition reminding her of her mother.

This time she watched with interest as the monstrous creatures everyone had turned into were all carted off into the shuttle, which she now recognized as an Imperial Landing Craft. Try as she might she failed to see even a shimmer as the craft vanished from view and left.

She idly wondered what he was doing with all of them and if he would end up needing more. _Maybe I should make an arrangement with Ken? I think I'll get it started. The costs are small enough and can be written off as charity work._

* * *

Once Xander arrived at the Tatooine base he had droids deliver the bulk of the specimens to the science labs. He probed both of the humans and realized neither was loyal to the Empire. Massad Thrumble wouldn't be a problem as long as he was contained, but Simonelle would be problematic. Shaking his head, he Force drained the relevant skills and knowledge and implanted then into Massad.

He woke Massad and told him that he had been recruited for a new secret project. Sadly he could feel Massad's thoughts and saw how he planned to eventually betray him. Force draining him was much easier on Xander this time. Although he still got a headache, he didn't have to sleep this time to process the knowledge gained.

Xander decided he would work on the project himself since he didn't have anything else urgent. He thought about it and remembered the reports of how fearsome the Dashade were once considered. He ended up making a call to Lilah for another ritual which she setup without any fuss. He also requested a vampire which she provided without any fuss. _God he loved competent help._

While on Earth he picked up Eric Gittleson. While not quite as knowledgeable as his lab partner, he still seemed to possess the spark of mad intuition that allowed him to defy conventional science. Better yet, he was eager to join Xander. Arranging his release from juvenile hall was simple. Since he was in town he decided to drop by the high school and talk to the rest of the people on the list.

Xander strode confidently into Sunnydale High. He was out of his armor and enjoying his new freedom. Using the Force he began tracking down the people on Warren's list. He realized that he only felt vaguely nostalgic about this place, like a barely remembered childhood. He almost didn't recognize Cordelia's voice.

"Xander, didn't you drop out of school? Well I can tell you that," Cordelia trailed off. "Xander, you look suddenly decent." She stared. "Is that Armani?" She grabbed his arm. "It is. It really suits you. How can you afford this?"

Xander watched in amusement as Cordelia seemed to carry on a whole conversation asking more questions about his clothing as he just stood there. Her lackeys seemed confused, not sure how to respond without Cordelia to give them an obvious lead. He decided to tease her a bit.

"I don't know if it's Armani. It's something my lawyers picked out for me. It was a gift. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some people to talk to." With that he started to stride off, leaving a stunned Cordelia behind.

"Harris!" Larry strode towards him. "Finally stopped hiding from me?"

When Larry grabbed him, Xander found himself amused by the juvenile attempt at intimidation. When Larry raised his fist he decided he was bored. He lashed out, careful not to collapse his throat and stepped around him as he fell down choking.

"Harris, I saw that!" Principle Snyder stalked towards him. "You think you can come back here after dropping out? Following in the footsteps of your delinquent friend now? Well you can forget it. Get out."

Xander calmly stood there throughout Snyder's rant. When he replied it was in a bored drawl. "I believe I once hoped to address you freely. I believe that time has now come. Except I find that you are too small time for me to bother with."

He strode off yet again when he senses Snyder reaching out to grab him. Careful to not let his amusement show he force-gripped the hand when it touched him. He maintained his force grip even as he continued walking away, dragging the principle behind him effortlessly.

Xander ignored the yelling and pulling from Snyder until he reached a staircase. With a bit of timing and a tiny force push, he caused him to tumble down the stairs. Everyone around him laughed as Snyder limped away.

Sadly most of the people declined his offer. The only one to accept was Peter Clarner, who had the makings of an alchemist. His requests seemed reasonable enough as well. Xander had never minded experimenting on a willing test subject.

As Xander left the highschool, Peter in tow, he noticed a police car parked in front. He shook his head at Snyder's efforts and with a mind trick walked right by them.

Once back at his lab he first worked on Eric. Since it seemed everyone on Earth possessed the talent for the Force or magic as they called it he would make a perfect alchemist. He quickly implanted the basic knowledge Eric would require to aid him. He then showed him the alchemy lab.

Next he worked on Peter, allowing Eric to assist him. Using alchemy they slowly augmented his physical form, making larger and stronger. His own notes and formulas were fascinating to read and adjusting for them was an interesting exercise.

Afterwards together they all inspected his new specimens. The Dashade were necessary since he had never laid eyes on one before. The others were various humans renowned for their physical prowess as well as various half-breeds. Sadly it seemed that most of their abilities had been inflated over time.

One by one Xander went and Force drained a copy of all of their memories and abilities. He then forced the vampire to convert each of the humans before caging it again. He left a few droids to guard the vampire before going to sleep off his headache.

Over the following week they worked on his Dashade design. Not all of the half-breeds were turned, but enough were to provide some fascinating data as well as parts. The rest were still of use for study as well as parts as well.

Using Walsh's notes and Eric's aid he managed to graft together the resulting corpses, creating an amazingly robust body. Power generation was handled by use the data gathered from the lightning based thief. As long as the body had any functioning organs it would continue to regenerate. The vampire parts meant if the body was ever completely disabled the entire thing dissolved into dust, including the cybernetics.

They implanted quite a few weapons. A sonic neutralizer was implanted to allow it to move in complete silence or hide a conversation. A Gun of Command was built into it's right arm allowing to subtly manipulate and control people with a wave of it's hand. Modified Kerestian Darksticks were implanted in it's left forearm. From the back of it's left hand a pair of two foot solid black curved energy blades would sprout forward like talons. Bony ridges disguised the emitters in the hands. The energy blades would cut through virtually everything.

They included supportive cybernetics as well. The largest augment was a nerve supplement that vastly increased it's reaction time. Due to having a droid brain there was no danger of overuse. Liberal use of Reflec would keep anyone from being the analyze any of the devices implanted if they were even detected. Several of the senses were also augmented.

Since it didn't need to breath, they shrank the lungs and moved the brain into the chest. The head was filled with various sensors, most of them organic and purchased through Wolfram & Hart from a Dr Sparrow. It's vision was telescopic and ranged into both the infra red and ultraviolet spectrum. It could hear higher and lower on the spectrum then a human and with much better clarity as well as possessing sonar. Lastly it could track via scent. _He definitely needed to see about getting some upgrades for himself later on._

Using Sith Alchemy was always easier on dead bodies and it was trivial to augment the body to well beyond it's already superhuman levels. The degradation of the brain as a side effect of all the changes was an easy price to pay since he was planning on using the droid brain designed by Massad and Simonelle anyway.

The modified verbobrain developed by Massad ended up having to be reprogrammed. The original setting was flawed in premise although the skills were kept. It were not intending to pretend to be human. Instead it were given an identity as Dashade. It would be superior and confident in it's status. It would be incorruptible and have a code of honor, one based on it's identity and suited to its role in his empire.

The last touch he made was to inscribe a copy of his own runes onto their bones. The Dashade would be unseen and hopefully unstoppable. He would have to look into adding in additional rune sets later on, for it as well as himself.

When mass produced they would serve him as his personal agents as the Hands had served Palpatine. They would also watch over the religion he was planning around himself. They would ruthlessly root out dissension and corruption. They would be his Inquisitors.

For now though he was satisfied with the one he built. He tasked it to watch over the scientists discretely.

* * *

When SG-1 entered the briefing room they found three new men standing with Col Hammond. The one in a civilian suit stepped forward to address them.

"Please sit down. We have a lot to go over."

O'Neill instead turned to Hammond. "Sir?"

Hammond was clearly unhappy. "People, this is Senator Kinsey. He heads the National Institute of Defense, known as the NID. He had be authorized by the president to lead this operation."

Kinsey looked smug as SG-1 sat down. "Thank you. Now these are agents Mancetti and Doyle." Each man nodded when named. "They will be heading this operation."

"The president has insisted that you be included. He holds you in high regard. Never-the-less you will respect the fact that they are in charge. Seeing as how you have yet to make a successful and friendly first contact with an advanced species you should be happy not to be in a position to make any more mistakes."

* * *

Marcie quietly played thumb wars with Carol in the corner unseen by the rest of the room. Being invisible had it's perks. Not for the first time she wished they could play some pranks on people. It would be so easy, but no, they were all like responsibility and secrets and stuff.

After an eternity of waiting, they finally all stood up. Thank god. Being sneaky was so boring. There wasn't anything interesting going on, although the big guy with the gold tattoo on his forehead was kind of neat. But she wasn't supposed to be talking to them.

She would have sighed if Carol hadn't played a hand on her shoulder. Carol was nice. Technically she was her mentor, but she acted a lot more like an older sister. A very cool older sister who had been running missions for years. Her stories were the best.

She quietly slipped into the car with Carol and the two handlers, eager to start her first mission. "So boys, where to?"

Mancetti, the talkative one, answered. "Sunnydale. It's why you were released from training early. It's also why they assigned two of you. I hope you're ready."

Marcie bounced in impatience as they drove back to her hometown. Doyle trusted her, why did Mancetti have to be such a jerk. When they drove up to a large compound with the sign XRD Labs, she was surprised not to recognize it.

When they entered she was again surprised there weren't any guards past the one at the gate. Wasn't part of breaking into secret facilities sneaking past hordes of guards?

Suddenly they got to a large room. Inside was a guy she recognized. To his side was a lawyer and a secretary. She ignored all the boring greetings to wonder what Xander was doing here. She almost missed the hand signal from Doyle.

She didn't mind working with Doyle. He was kind of a mother hen but at he was at least polite. She didn't know how Carol worked with Mancetti all the time. He came across as a total creeper.

As she snuck up behind the lawyer she had to suppress a snicker thinking about her expression. It was so funny when they freaked out. She rubbed her wrist a bit. The storage pouch implanted in her wrist still ached a bit.

She idly wondered how they had figured out how to make something that could hold so much inside it. She drew her knife, admiring how it looked like it was made from glass. She wondered why they were talking about ships.

She got ready when Mancetti went into his speech. He was talking about patriotism and being productive and other boring stuff. Basically the same speech he had given her. He even had some paper that looked like a warrant. He looked like some kind of shady used car salesmen as he stood there.

What was important was that he had drawn his gun and was covering SG-1. It was a weird gun too. It looked like some kind of gold snake. It looked pretentious. Doyle had his gun drawn and it was a perfectly normal gun. All professional looking.

Suddenly she heard a buzzing sound. She looked over in time to see Xander holding some kind of beam of energy. _Was that a lightsaber!_ He deflected a bolt of energy from the Mancetti before stabbing it behind him into the air. _Carol!_

Marcie was so distracted she barely noticed the secretary turn around and her skin shimmer around her hand as a burst of razor blades tore through her.

In horrible pain, she collapsed to the floor. She heard the sound a large impact and shattering wood as well as the sounds of lightning although she couldn't see anything. The sounds of Doyle screaming were the last thing she heard before blacking out. _I'm sorry Doyle, looks like I wasn't ready yet._

* * *

SG-1 stood frozen. They were still in shock over the events of the last few moments. First the NID agents had attempted to kidnap the CEO they were meeting. Then said CEO had drawn a lightsaber. He had used it to deflect the shot from the Zat before extending his other hand. The Zat they weren't supposed to have. Mancetti had then been blown across the room and through the doors with a wave of his hand. Then Doyle had been electrocuted by lighting coming out of his hand. Now they stood there trying to figure out what to do.

The sound of Xander laughing drew their stares. He grinned as he noticed. "What? Death to slavers! I was a slave once. Never again."

He waited a moment. "So... do I need to kill you as well?"

"He's a Sith!" Clemens blurted out. He sounded almost hysterical with fear. "Don't trust anything he says."

Still faintly smiling Xander sighed and rolled his eyes. "Yes, because I need another advantage since all I have is you at my mercy. Alright, I'm just going to wait for you to recover. Drink?" He concluded cheerfully.

O'Neill raised his hand. "Whiskey?"

"Sorry. I have water and hmmm." He looked around. "Apparently that's it. I really need to stock this place. Oh well, it's not like I ever use it. So, since it doesn't look like you're involved in this little bit of idiocy, why don't you tell me why you're here? Just a fair warning. If you attempt to arrest me, things are not going to go well for you."

Jackson spoke up then. "No, we're not here to capture you or enslave you. We were supposed to make contact and try to make some kind of deal."

"Not sure what you can offer me, but I'm open to suggestions."

Carter was the one to speak up then. "We are here to negotiate a trade agreement and are wondering if you will be willing to share some technology with us."

"He's a sith!" Clemens was upset. "Why are you talking with him?"

Xander sighed and then raised a hand. Clemens voice cut off as he began gasping for air. "Just because I'm dark doesn't make me unreasonable. You are really annoying. Given how your group had just tried to enslave me I am perfectly justified in killing all of you. I only didn't because it was clear you didn't know about it and protested on my behalf."

O'Neill interrupted his lecture at that point. "If you let him go I promise he won't speak again."

Xander raised an eyebrow in skepticism, but let Clemens drop to the floor.

Teal'c spoke up for the first time, breaking the silence. "If you truly hate slavery, then you will end up at war with our enemies. They are called the Goa'uld. They call themselves gods and my entire race, the Jaffa, are their slaves as are countless others."

Xander froze and then looked completely serious for the first time that meeting. "Perhaps we can work something out. Tell me everything."


	7. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

The meeting ended on a much more positive note then SG-1 had hoped for. Especially considering the radical actions of the NID agents. After a quick briefing on the Goa'uld Xander had proven to be quite reasonable. He had tentatively agreed to defend Earth from alien threat, but wanted more information.

They agreed to pause the talks until the next morning. Xander generously paid to have them stay in a very nice hotel suite. They went to sleep feeling cautiously optimistic about the meeting, although Clemens was still suspicious.

The meeting the next morning started off very differently. The meeting room had been fully furnished and decorated. There were both snacks and drinks available, including various types of whiskey. He reassured them that he didn't hold the actions of the two agents against them. Though when they inquired about the remains, he told them not to worry about it.

Unwilling to start an argument over it, SG-1 dropped the subject. Meanwhile Clemens, under strict orders to behave, sulked in the corner. The rest of the team had discussed Xander's powers the night before and upon Clemens rant about evil had ignored him.

The rest of the meeting went well. He affirmed his decision to safeguard Earth from alien threats. He even hinted at being willing to work with them. Although he currently wasn't willing to share any technology, he did say he might be open to trade in the future.

So it was fairly confident that they reported back to Gen Hammond. They were shocked at first when informed that any kind of alliance was not possible at this time and demanded to know why. In response he handed over a news paper.

The headline proclaimed the death of Senator Kinsey and his family. Pictures of two bodies that were recovered were being blamed. The body of Mancetti was found half buried in the rubble with the remains of an IED. Doyles' smoking remains were found holding stripped wires for the security system. The death count was over thirty, with a large portion of his staff and friends being present for a dinner party.

Clemens was insufferably smug. He kept telling them he was right until the rest of them began avoiding him. After going through a lot of the Star Wars material gathered, Teal'c had agreed with him that Xander could not be trusted. The rest of the team couldn't muster much of an counter argument given the mass murder committed.

* * *

For Warren the delivery of the Givin was both a blessing and a curse. The examination of their anatomy was of great aid in designing his new droids. However the interviews revealed that the majority of their culture and personality was unsuited for their role. However, he was unwilling to select another race after the amount of work he had already invested.

Frustrated he was looking through the archives for ideas when he came across a new entry. He read the details in fascination. Project Warmind would work perfectly. He immediately called Xander.

The discussion was quick. Xander easily turned over all of the stormtrooper brains for his use along with their test results. To preserve the fiction of a race a new language would be constructed for them. It would be mathematically complex and incredibly information dense. The language would also be rhythmic and tonal. It would use Givin as the root of the language for authenticity.

To aid the efforts, Warren used the research staff Xander had assembled. He had the droids construct a new language based off the Givin language and binary. The results were everything he could hope for. The language, which he ended up calling Trinary, made full use of the Givin's highly complex voice box. The voice box provided an echo-like overlay to their resonant voices. The echo was an essential part of the language, which ended up containing an even hundred phonemes. After they had also designed a set of etiquette rules for their species and military based off the Givin culture and Imperial protocol.

Since the Givin anatomy possessed a number of vestigial organs, including lungs they didn't have to use Warren ended up redesigning them more then he had planned. The enhanced digestive system was expanded a bit and the lungs removed completely. The voice was produced within an echo chamber in the chest from recirculated internal gases. The open space was used to house a stormtrooper warmind as well as the cybernetic extensions to boost analytical skills such as astrogration and range finding.

Using Trinary he came up with a naming scheme that would reveal which of the five Soldier Warminds served as their base as well as serve as individual identification. Since each of the stormtroopers had tested better at slightly different tasks it would be efficient to be able to identify such information quickly.

Feeling creative he redesigned the phase three Darktrooper armor with the aid of the stormtrooper Warminds. The armor ended up resembling sectional plate mail with overlapping plates denying any gaps in the armor. From testing feedback he had made the shield generators larger at the expense of the repulsorlifts. While they would be much slower in the air, the calculations showed they would be much harder to injure or kill.

Feeling inspired by the appearance of the Givins, Warren had aesthetically imprinted the surface of the armor to look like it was comprised of bones. The head was encased in a rigid cowl reminiscent of Darth Vader's helmet. Xander had loved the look and ordered it imprinted with Reflec so sensors would literally only return the faint impressions of skeletons.

The suit was designed to hold all the power generation needed to run all the equipment mounted on it. They planned for the primary weapon to be an E-Web blaster mounted on an robotic arm sprouting from the back. It would provide additional bracing when firing and allow the weapon to be holstered on the back when not in use. The right hand gauntlet carried could extend a number of retractable weapons. It contained a large vibroblade, a sonic disruptor, ion rifle and maser rifle. The left gauntlet contained a large retractable vibroblade, heat beam and disrupter pistol as well as a buckler that unfolded into a large shield emitter. The shield emitter would significantly boost the strength of the armor's shields, rivaling that of most starfighters.

Most of the equipment made use of the space folding technology he had gained from the Institute. He was just annoyed that he hadn't managed to scale it up yet. He couldn't wait to see his new stormtroopers in action.

* * *

For Xander, the most interesting result of the entire meeting was the golden snake gun. The zat gun, as the others had nicknamed it, was a fascinating piece of technology. Light use of Force drain had revealed that Teal'c and Carter had by far possessed the most information on his new weapon. He had stopped when he found out the Goa'uld seemed to use an entirely new technological base.

Yet another call to Lilah and a quick ritual had yielded enormous amounts of information. However, it came at a cost. He almost collapsed after the ritual. Extensive testing revealed that he had been draining himself with the ritual. The energy he used apparently recovered much slower then he had thought. In the future he would have to take much greater care and consideration before using the ritual.

Considering he never heard back from the SG-1 team he had to assume they were neutral towards him if not actively hostile. Thankfully he could create copies of them to Force drain even if he could only afford to do it once.

Goa'uld technology seemed to be based around the material Naquadah. It was used as a building material for it's strength and durability. It was supposedly stronger then anything else and exhibited no degradation over time from almost any factors. Equipment made from it was expected to last for centuries without maintenance.

It was also used as an energy source. It could somehow be converted into a liquid and used as a nearly unlimited fuel supply. Again a power source was expected to last centuries without need of refueling.

Thankfully the zat gun was made up of both types of the miracle material. Unfortunately using the Force to open up the weapon took hours and left him exhausted. Thankfully he was able to successfully take scans of the interior of the weapon after that. He got the molecular makeup of both forms of Naquadah as well as the inner workings of the weapon itself.

When he showed it to them both Willow and Warren became very excited about the potential in the new data. They ended up teaming together to study it and how to incorporate it into everything. As he left the lab, Xander could hear them speculating about whether the data would make some previously impractical designs viable.

* * *

Bored Xander checked with the rest of his scientists to see which projects he could speed up. The Architect droid teams were steadily working on building his infrastructure. Willow had argued with him successfully and he had diverted all the construction on the moon into a full World Devastator. As new Architects were constructed most of them were shuttled over to aid in the efforts.

Willow and Warren were busy conducting extensive testing on the new materials. So far the results looked promising. They were also studying the design of the weapon.

The rest of the former Imperial scientists were all working under Lira Wessex. His specifications for the his new flagship were extensive and would require all of their talents. A cut down version of the deathstar laser and increasing the number of weapons were the primary offensive changes. He had also wanted the weapons evenly spaced across the ship to minimize blind spots. The majority were also to be capable of shooting forward.

On the defensive side he wanted quantum crystalline armor sheathing the entire ship. He also wanted it to be used to line all of the hangers as well as the space-frame. The ship was also to possess molecular shielding as well as an ion version of said shield. It was also to contain redundant concussion shields and inertial compensators.

A lesser version of the World Devastator was to be installed within to be able to create smaller vessels and structures up to a kilometer in length. The ship was also to be much more extensively automated. The use of droids was to be anticipated in most areas, reducing the need for life support and consumables.

The freed space was to be used to increase the size of the hangers. He also wanted them to convert much of the cargo areas into additional hangers. Most of the hangers should be designed with storage racks in mind so that they can contain truly enormous numbers of smaller starships.

He ordered a delay in the production of any ships other then prototypes for now. He kept them busy planning though. The ship could either be refitted or redesigned depending on any new technologies they discovered, but the team would need time to familiarize themselves with the ship anyway. He would wait to see if Willow and Warren would discover anything significant before bringing it to them.

With nothing vital to take care of he dropped by Wolfram & Hart. While Lilah had been doing excellent work, not taking any precautions was just asking to be taken advantage of. Her bodyguard lowered the chance, but redundancy was always good.

When got there Lilah was actually pleased to see him. Apparently she had a proposal in mind. He looked over the packet she had prepared and realized how large a market there was for medieval age weaponry. Entire dimensions imported weapons by the ton on a frequent basis.

There wasn't a standard currency so everything seemed to function in a barter system. Wolfram & Hart functioned as a broker and intermediary. Entire dimensions were geared towards meeting the demand for weapons. The source of his broken homeless people was one such dimension.

Xander was very interested to note that magical items was one of the commodities traded, but at the faint urging of the Force didn't inquire further. He told Lilah he would consider it. The only other thing of note was the guard he had supplied Lilah had a request.

The discussion of protective garments ranged across several areas and lasted over an hour. In the end though he had a new project for Eric. While the initial proposal had been to provide protective garments for Lilah, his ideas had already gone well beyond that.

When he made his back he found Eric in the labs. After explaining everything he wanted he watched an satisfaction as Eric immediately went to work. Based on the research his droids conducted Nephila spiders would suit his needs best. He had tasked a number of probe droids to discretely collect samples of the largest and strongest webs and their makers before arriving.

Leaving Eric to his new project, he found he needed a new project for himself. He needed to wait on Lilah's proposal since he wasn't willing to delay any other projects further by shifting Architect droids away.

* * *

Curious about the prompt from the Force Xander decided to meditate on the matter. Thankfully he had the foresight to construct an additional meditation chamber in XRD Labs. He would hate to have to fly back to Mars just to meditate. He made a mental note to have another meditation chamber constructed at his new complex in Los Angeles.

Xander meditated deeply, searching for what had been behind the unusual prompt. As he sank deeper his senses expanded outwards. However it felt like the answer was always just out of reach, a teasing presence just as the edge of his perception. Throwing himself recklessly outwards, he called upon techniques from the hundreds of sith in his mind.

As if a light switch had been thrown he suddenly saw his answer. All throughout the town around him were the signatures of dozens of magical items. Based on the auras, several were incredibly powerful. He came out of his chamber already typing in orders and making plans.

Over the next day Xander ferried over almost a third of his stockpile of probe droids along with most of his remaining enforcer droids. He ordered squads of droids to loot all of the locations that were located in isolated fairly accessible areas. Most of the locations were crypts and ruins. He also sent down a large number of droids to began mapping out the network of underground tunnels and caves.

He had his research staff investigate the finds. The staff was various processing droids who looked through the accumulated lore of Giles and Jenny. He had long since picked out all of the books that contained demons and had them launched into the sun. The rest were scanned and archived. He had copied and traded through Lilah several books, expanding his collection by an enormous amount.

He instructed the teams to prioritize speed. He was amused to note that the vampires still all fled at the distinctive sound of their repulsorlifts. He had stopped using the probe droids to patrol since the incident with the government agents, but it would seem they still feared them.

After all of the easily retrievable artifacts were obtained he switched strategies. He led the following teams into the depths to gain many of the others. They ended up in pitch battles more then once, having to fight there way through various huge demons and their minions. He took extensive samples of everything, already thinking about the warbeasts he could make from them.

An enormous number of droids were lost. He lost almost the entire contingent of probe droids and had to fetch more before he felt he had sufficiently plundered the area. More then once he was glad for the power armor he had borrowed from Warren.

A majority of the other artifacts he gained were stolen. He snuck around town and stunned inhabitants before breaking in and stealing the items he sensed. He used Force drain on them to check on potential future problems and more then one house had burned down to conceal his theft and subsequent murder.

The only two places he didn't do this was a store called the Magic Box and the Mayor's office. At the store, he had just purchased everything. The Mayor's office though was too dangerous at this time given how powerful a warlock he was.

When Xander had had dinner with the Mayor he could literally feel the power emanating from him. They had developed a mutual wariness of each other's power and he had no plans or desire to confront him at this time. While he was confident he could kill the Mayor, an orbital strike would probably also destroy all the magic items. He also didn't want anymore government attention then he already had.

While all of this was going on his shuttle was working just as hard. The Imperial Landing Craft had been hastily fitted with a very sophisticated array of sensors. It had then been sent to unobtrusively scan the entire planet for any further traces of the metal Naquadah. Discovering that the Goa'uld had once lived on Earth he was confident of finding some traces left behind. Given how durable their technology was, he was hoping to find working examples.

By the time he felt that he had looted the entire town the scans were completed. He ordered the items stored at the Tatooine base for now. He was much more interested in the scan data. He was surprised at how few hits there were. The locations of the them was even more surprising.

He quickly dispatched probe droids to the sites currently accessible. A large team was sent to excavate the site in Antarctica since it was doubtless buried under the ice. More excavation teams were sent to the sites in other remote areas of the world. The last team was sent to Egypt. Fortunately the site was also isolated, being in the middle of the desert.

He would have to be careful about investigating the numerous hits in the United States though. The hit off the coast of New Jersey was isolated, but he would have to construct droids capable of exploring underwater for that investigation. The second site was in Cheyenne, Colorado and came from within the military base there. He assumed that was the base for the Stargate program. The third was in Area 51, which means it really might be an alien tech research lab.

The other sites were in places he had no ready explains for. Cross referencing them just made the picture more interesting. The one in Avon, Indiana seemed to from a large building. It was some tech company and more importantly a civilian tech company. Another was in Seattle, Washington. It was located in the middle of a suburb. The last was underground and located under Glastonbury Tor in Britain.

He directed all of the items located to be given to Willow and Warren. By this point Warren had withdrawn from school completely. He had apparently been so engrossed with working with Willow that he had just stopped attending. Seeing as he didn't really need any recruits anymore he had filled out the paperwork and given him permission to move to the Tatooine Base.

He informed them about the site in the ocean and was glad to see them start working on a way to salvage it immediately. Before they could get too engrossed in their planning he told them about their new lab. Due to the dangers of experimenting with new technology he couldn't chance them destroying the shield base. So he had set up another of his Garrison Bases and had all of their equipment moved into it. He sent them off with a large staff of droids and wished them luck.


	8. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

The preliminary results of the Goa'uld technology were already fascinating. The Artisans it turned out could make more metal Naquadah, although it was a very slow process. Unfortunately, the only attempt to make liquid Naquadah had vaporized the Artisan droid and a large chunk of the ground. Thankfully they had tried it outside the base since the crater was almost the size of the garrison base. Willow had demanded more liquid Naquadah before she could do anything about upgrading their power sources.

Fortunately it turns out the metal form was still useful. Due to it's density it couldn't be used for use in large amounts unless the item was relatively stationary. It did function as an incredible energy amplifier, which allowed Warren to build a prototype blaster with incredible firepower.

Willow had continued testing and found a critical weakness of the metal. Due to an odd quirk in how it amplified energy, ion blasts propagated catastrophically. Any exposure would end up turning the metal into a bomb.

Overall, the metal's use as anything save an energy amplifier wasn't worth it. Quantum crystalline armor was far superior to Naquadah in durability and strength. The only reason quantum armor wasn't using for everything was the fact that it weighed just as much as Naquadah and was extremely difficult to create.

He continued to read through the progress report, stopping only when he came across the note that they had found several living specimens. The first one was found in one of the canopic jars. Willow had detected an energy signature and scans had revealed a hibernating creature within. The jar itself was thousands of years old. Between the age and the medical scans they believed it to be a Goa'uld. Xander stopped reading at that point.

Xander ran all the way to the medical bay, only glancing back at the report to confirm it had been sent there. Once there he asked the droid for the specimens. When he saw them he almost danced with glee. He hurried over to the second specimen, while looking through the report about it.

He stared down at the woman. She had been found within a device retrieved from Mexico. The medical scanner had shown she was thousands of years old, although she didn't look over twenty. Of even more interest was that the scans showed about her blood. Her bloodstream had a large flow of several unknown chemicals as well as trace amounts of Naquadah. She was also being kept sedated after attacking the probe droids.

The medical scanner had also revealed a parasitic growth wrapped around her spinal cord. It was another Goa'uld. He grinned thinking about everything he could learn from it. _What secrets do you hold for me?_ A casual brush with the Force revealed an alien mind contained within. He was glad to note it's thoughts were comprehensible and it didn't instantly give him a headache.

Even a light Force drain showed how ancient it's mind was. Xander carefully probed, digging deeper for every relevant piece of technical data it possessed. Impatient, he plunged into the centuries worth of memories contained within.

Once within he rapidly began using Force drain. He absorbed everything he felt was important while burning away the rest. Unfortunately he got greedy and kept too much. He left the broken shell of a Goa'uld with is mind almost splitting from the headache of absorbing so much information.

Once he had woken he staggered over to a bed and collapsed. He had enough time to leave a note for anyone who checked up on him before blacking out.

Once he finally woke up he staggered over to the body and opened his mouth. On instinct, the only thing he had left it, the Goa'uld switched hosts. Once there he reached into it and erased even it's instincts. It was not longer Hathor, now it was literally an extension of his own mind.

As he felt the former Goa'uld bond to him he reflected on what he had done. While he had been getting very proficient in Force drain, absorbing thousands of years worth of intact alien memories would have overwhelmed even his expanded mind. Even the centuries worth of memories he had absorbed was dangerous. While he had come out intact he knew it had influenced him.

After meditating on the matter he decided that worrying over it would just be self destructive. From what he had seen the Goa'uld were just like the Sith in attitude. They were missing actual powers though and only succeeded because they were lucky enough to discover incredible technology.

Technology they still didn't fully understand. He didn't plan on making that mistake. The memories he had gained were a good start, but he was betting Willow and Warren could take it further. Before that, he still had another Goa'uld to drain.

The Goa'uld in the jar was much easier to drain. Whether because it was in stasis or because of the memories from Hathor he didn't know. Osiris, as the Goa'uld was called, had known much more technical data then Hathor. Despite the easier integration, he still had to sleep again since he absorbed so many more memories.

When he woke up he switched Goa'uld. Hathor's body was a queen and he had better uses for it then to passively augment his own form. For now he placed it within the canopic jar, but he already had plans for it. If his memories were correct, he wouldn't need droid brains to control war beasts. Instead, he would be able to spawn preprogrammed symbiotes to control them.

He wondered what secrets the last being held and impatiently probed her frozen body. The results were horribly depressing. She had no memories at all. The scans also revealed she didn't have a Goa'uld and had been infected by some unknown virus. The simulations of it were pretty intimidating and reminded him of the rakghoul plague. Disappointed, he ordered her stored with the rest of the equipment and marked with a biohazard note. Maybe one of the others will have an idea of what to do with her later on.

Both Willow and Warren were more then happy to accept the new information. He was glad that he had called them over since they both collapsed as soon as the transfer was done.

* * *

While waiting for them to wake up he decided to check on the status off the other projects. He avoided Lira's team knowing that with the incorporation of Goa'uld technology, they would have to completely rebuild the Executor. _I really need a new name for the ship when it's finally built_.

He was surprised to note that the Artisan conversions were completed. He checked, but the World Devastator seemed to have enough Architects working on it. With the Warmind and Givin factories nearing completion he suddenly had an excess of the droids.

He immediately tasked them to complete an additional series of factories. One of them would be for the fabrication of his new silk and the others would be for production of equipment for the stormtroopers, which he decided to rename Spartoi.

Thinking about it, he decided that he would go with a full Greek theme. He didn't want to be associated with the Goa'uld and he had always liked the Greek myths. He made a note to get his garrison bases modified to reflect his new theme. _Maybe Lilah can recommend a good architect?_

After a thought, he added an additional factory to the build queue. A single factory would be more then adequate to initially create the weapons for demonic trading. He moved to the front of the queue after some thought. With potential government interference, he might need the resources.

He was impatient to get started, but a quick check of the time showed it would be some hours before his lawyer was awake. He wouldn't mind waking her up, but he needed her best work. Since he had time, he checked on the design of the chrysalis for the Weavers. Thankfully it seemed that Eric hadn't made any mistakes.

* * *

With hours left, he began sorting through the various magical items gathered by his droids. They had already been cataloged and researched thanks to his automated research staff. He looked through the results carefully. Unfortunately to majority were minor items that worthless for him. He made a mental note to sell them through Lilah later on.

To distract himself from the wait, he decided to build himself a suit of armor. With all of his new memories he no longer loathed the former armor that had trapped him. Looking at it objectively, the armor had been very intimidating. He needed a suit of armor anyway, he had no intention of being dressed in useless ceremonial garb. His empire would be militaristic and his image would reflect that.

He created a set of armor that resembled his original suit. It was much better protected, armored in the same style armor as his newly renamed Spartoi. It was crude, more cosmetic then functional with his new durability, but upgrading it would wait for the Goa'uld research.

Finishing with is armor, he checked the time and realized it was almost noon. He immediately called Lilah and read her off his mental checklist. He made a quick trip back to Earth to drop off the magical items to sell and pick up the homeless people he needed for his experiments.

As he sorted through the remaining artifacts Xander thought about how to use them all. Testing the artifacts showed most of them to be fairly straight forward. The Orbs of Nezzla'khan needed to only touch the body to grant it's effects. The Glove of Myhnegon and the Amulet of Cauldis had to be worn and anointed in blood. The Effigy of Proserpexa required energy to be channeled into it. The last two artifacts were the ones that ended up using all of his test subjects.

The Gem of Amara was mounted on a ring, but wasn't required. It regenerated vampires endlessly while worn. Testing revealed it didn't work on dead flesh, only vampires. More testing showed that it worked on demonic energy, enhancing it in specific ways. Since he couldn't use it without permanently altering it, he put off to the side for later study. If he could replicate it, it could be added to his Inquisitors.

The Amulet of Balthazar proved to be the most difficult to study. When he finally did alchemically alter it to be usable by anyone it's effects proved fascinating. It enhanced strength immensely, but provided no protection, even against said strength. The bearer would literally tear himself apart if his body couldn't handle the strain.

Eager to test out enhancements on himself he decided to first create a failsafe system. He felt he had the beginnings of one through the Goa'uld. Through Lilah he ordered a series of clones created from his own flesh. They were magically grown and essentially mindless.

He put the clones through surgical procedures to have his runes as well as additional runes tattooed onto their bones and organs. He also had a Kara Kesh device built into each of their hands. Enchanted armor plating was inserted throughout the torso, in particular the chest.

He had used the rest of Dr Walsh's research to further alter them, granting them electrokinesis and regeneration. As long as they didn't run out of energy they would continue to heal. The regeneration would also cause them to cease aging.

He had then applied Sith Alchemy to the clones, essentially turning them into disguised sith spawn. He sacrificed their mental capacity to further augment their toughness and healing. He then implanted his Goa'uld into one of the clones. Through the Goa'uld he felt like he now possessed a second body. The other two clones were placed in storage.

Afterwards he had the Orbs of Nezzla'khan, the Amulet of Cauldis and the Amulet of Balthazar implanted within it's chest. He had his second body don the armor he had created. The body would serve as his public face and a backup for himself.

Running both bodies proved to be a bit distracting, but manageable. He found the second body had only limited ability to act unless he concentrated on it. Implanting knowledge into the Goa'uld allowed it to fight without him having to concentrating on it. Although, he still had to concentrate when making it perform anything that it wasn't programmed for.

Performance wise the second body was amazing. It was incredibly strong, able to tear through durasteel restraints with ease. It was also durable enough to survive a laser cannon and a staff cannon with only light burns, all of which healed quickly.

The artifacts had provided powerful offensive capabilities. The Glove of Myhnegon amplified it's electrokinesis into a stream of lightning. Combined with Force lightning, it could melt durasteel. The Effigy of Proserpexa had been alchemically recast into another gauntlet. This one was capable of hurling an enormous cone of fire that was closer to plasma.

Although capable of wielding all of his Force powers, it couldn't wield any but the most basic without him controlling it. However, the Amulet of Cauldis amplified the powers it did use. The Kara Kesh did the same for both the lightning and fire attacks. They augmented Force push into a devastating technique able to level a small building.

He was already making plans for using Hathor to create a series of backup bodies for himself. He also planned to use them as the basis for his version of the Imperial Sentinels. With his Goa'uld mind-link he would be able to effortlessly spy upon anyone who had one. The only problem to work out was their equipment.

He had already discovered that both the Effigy of Proserpexa and the Glove of Myhnegon had incorporated Naquadah into their design. He was determined to replicate their enchantments and eventually expand upon them. He realized it would take extensive testing, but he now had time.

When Xander finally got around to checking on them, he was glad to note that Willow and Warren were up and already working. He used a light Force drain to check their mind, but left when he didn't note any problems.

He was glad to see Willow already working on creating a hybrid power generator. Warren seemed to be further modifying his initial hybrid blaster. They had also apparently stolen Kooloota Fyf from Lira's team.

The only Givin that had agreed to work for Xander and didn't display xenophobia, Kooloota Fyf had been welcomed with open arms. He had formerly been the head of the shipbuilders guild, rising through the ranks naturally, making him a superb designer.

* * *

Kooloota was glad for his current situation. While he missed his people, he had long since considered himself married to his job and wasn't particularly close to anyone. He had also been working with other races for decades and was no longer bothered by their appearance.

He had been imprisoned for years and fully expected to die there. Summoned through the Force by Darth Xander was unexpected but welcome. He had always supported a strong centralized government, so aiding in the creation of the Sith Imperium felt correct.

The stormtrooper project with Warren had been a bit disturbing, but fascinating at the same time. Calculating how each part would function together had been a enjoyable exercise. Working with Lira was not nearly so pleasant. The Executor had been a horribly inefficient design and pointing them out had earned her enmity.

He had been working on incorporating the new technology Willow had been kind enough to make available to him. Talks with Xander had made him realize that everything would have to be redesigned. The dimensional folding technology from the Institute would be particularly useful if it could ever be scaled upwards.

Then he had been pulled into this newest project. He was glad to be working with Warren again. Willow was also interesting and intelligent enough to have real conversations with. Integrating the new Goa'uld technology was a fascinating challenge worthy of his time.

* * *

Eric was excited as he focused on his latest project. This was his chance to finally prove himself. He had helped Xander with the Dashade Inquisitors, but hadn't done anything since. Xander had been implanting everything he knew about Sith Alchemy and he had been sleeping off the headaches constantly. The rest of his time was spent researching the medical technology as well as various runes and enchantments that could prove useful. He wanted to build warbeasts eventually.

The probe droids had returned from Africa with a number of unknown spiders that produced amazing silk. Even for the materials available from the Star Wars universe, it was remarkably tough. He couldn't wait to see how he could improve it.

Eagerly Eric began experimenting on the spiders using sith alchemy. Over the following week he sent out the probe droids to collect additional specimens. As he progressed in his project the specimens he requested became more varied. At the end of it he had successfully created a new species of spider.

The spider had been grown in size and had become a warped misshapen caricature of it's former self. Its movement were jerky and clumsy, lacking almost any grace save for it's spinnerets. It's lifespan was measured in hours and it required a massive amount of food to sustain itself. However, Xander felt every one of those sacrifices was well worth it.

For every sacrifice had been to augment the one thing he cared about. The warping was a size effect of massively increasing the size of the silk producing glands. The lifespan and metabolism necessary for it to produce silk faster. And everything else had been for the silk itself.

The final product was a thing of beauty. A fine shimmering black thread which had a tensile strength so high it was nigh unbreakable. It was also resist enough to energy to slow a lightsaber blade.

The last part of his project was something that truly had him crackling in success. He had successfully grown a batch of the spiders and then grafted pieces of them into a larger construct. The culmination of his week's work was a four armed humanoid figure with a mass of spinnerets along each finger. With it's body sustained by the bio-electrical field from it's organs everything it ate could be converted straight into pure silk.

With it's elongated multi-jointed fingers he was confident it could spin it's own thread as well as weave its own clothe. The brain would have been tricky, but he instead installed a droid brain with some tailoring software. He was eternally thankful for the knowledge Xander had implanted from Massad that showed him how to hook a normal droid brain up to a biofiber construct. For ease of reference he had just named them Weavers. Eric called the new cloth Nightweave.

When his chrysalis designs for mass production had been approved he had felt like he had proven himself. He requested the resources to start on a project to create a war beast. In the meantime he went back to studying.

* * *

For Pete, Xander had given him everything. With his improved body he lost his physical insecurities that had driven him previously. However, it was replaced by a need to pay Xander back. With his new knowledge he realized the path he had been heading down and Xander had saved him. He had even offered him a great job.

His new job was challenging and fun. The ability to sculpt life was extremely addicting. He realized early on that he would never be willing to give up his job. He had thrown himself wholeheartedly into supporting Xander's Sith Imperium.

His relationship with Debbie proved how right his choices had been. Xander had allowed her to visit him at the XRD Labs. After she signed a contract, he even allowed him to show her his real lab and take her into space. Their relationship had never been stronger.

He considered it a small enough price to pay to work under Eric for now. He knew eventually Eric would move into creating monsters, but he had enough of them to last a lifetime. He enjoyed the act of creation. He couldn't wait to see what he could make when he was in charge.

* * *

Lilah was ecstatic. Given the unprecedented level of business Darth Xander had brought in she had already been fast tracked within Special Operations. She had a full staff to aid her and she wielded as much influence as some of the lesser department heads. With his confirmation on both the silk and weapons her influence would grow in leaps and bounds.

She anticipated getting her own department soon. The Senior Partners still seemed leery of dealing with him directly. The rest of the firm had followed their lead, but were watching her meteoric rise enviously.

Her performance review had been awkward. The demon sent had attempted to intimidate her and her bodyguard had promptly disintegrated it. The management had initially panicked, but in the end nothing had come of it and she had been given a glowing review. Her fate was pretty much tied permanently to Xanders with that act, but she hadn't minded. She had yet to break a deal and had no intention of ever doing so.

When Xander had finally started making use of the firms more exotic services she couldn't have been happier. While she had proven herself useful to Xander, there was no guarantee he wouldn't be tempted away by another law firm. However no other firm could compete with Wolfram & Hart in satisfying a client's unusual requests.

Although his latest request was unusual even for them. He wanted her to use diviners to locate a science fiction franchise he could invest heavily into and possibly purchase. The additional list of requirements the franchise had to meet made the request even odder. She shrugged and started working on it. _Oh well, after all the client is king_.

* * *

Hammond looked almost happy when he called the SG-1 at the next meeting. "Teal'c you will be glad to know that your request for a mission to Chulak has been accepted. Further, the number of both missions and SG teams is set to be greatly increased."

"The president is personally backing the program and after the fiasco with the NID the Senate hasn't put up any resistance. You are all also requested to meet with Mr. Harris again."

He raised a hand to stop any protests. "The fact of the matter is, he is simply too valuable to ignore. Since you have made peaceful contact before, the risks were deemed acceptable."

* * *

Throughout all of this, Darth Xander read his reports of probe droid patrols being ambushed and destroyed. He kept his rage in check as the backup forces reported a lack of any remains. He kept working even as his security was probed at his two facilities and his losses mounted. It seems he had enemies to deal with.


	9. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Lilah had never been more grateful that she worked for Xander. Some idiot had actually reassembled The Judge, an ancient demon of mass destruction. They had then unleashed him on the mall. The mall where she had been shopping.

The Judge had just waltzed into the mall in full view of the public. He had been followed a number of vampires. He then proceeded to vaporize a number of people. The vampires had all been standing there laughing, the insane bastards.

Then her beautiful bodyguard, still disguised as just a plain secretary, had stepped forward. There was a faint humming sound and then a bolt of white energy had turned the demon's head into ash. The hologram had wavered for a second, but no one seemed to notice. Especially given the large blue monster laying headless on the ground.

The group of vampires accompanying the demon had promptly attempted to run away. The bodyguard had managed to gun down two of them before the rest got away. The police had finally shown up and kept order until some NID agents had carted the body away.

Being questioned by both groups had pretty much ruined her evening and taken hours. Thankfully her bodyguard as able to disguise itself as a random bystander and so avoided any attention. She had also missed her dinner reservation and had to reschedule two appointments. The only redeeming part of the night was that the clerk hadn't charged her for her selections. It was a small enough consolation prize given her salary.

If she had any doubts on the bodyguard spying on her for Xander they were laid to rest the next morning. Xander had requested a meeting and when she showed up he replaced her bodyguard. Since he transferred it's programming, she guessed it could be considered a full body upgrade instead.

The new form was in response to some of the vampires getting away. It somehow contained what looked like a minigun, but he stated was a rotary autoblaster, within each arm. A smaller turret could also folded out of each shoulder. Each weapon contained it's own tactical targeting system.

Afterwards, she had gladly posted the bounty he requested. He had identified two of the vampires as Spike and Drusilla and both now had massive bounties on them. That done, started working the latest project for Xander.

Setting up a distribution network for Nightweave cloth was frustrating. Mostly because of having to deal with Eric. Fortunately Pete was much more reasonable. Debbie was also proving to be useful and she was thinking about setting her up as their spokesperson. The returns would more then justify it as she had already received tentative offers.

* * *

Eric found dealing with Lilah over the production of Nightweave just as irritating as she did. He had never been happier to have Pete's aid. Pete had taken over modifying the Weavers and monitoring the chrysalises for him. He was capable of doing it himself, but they took up so much time. Time in which he could be working on his newest project.

Xander had finally given him permission to create a war beast. The requirements for the beast were fairly broad and he already knew how he was planning on meeting them. It was also one of the reasons he hadn't minded taking Lilah's calls as she was the one to arrange for the capture and delivery of the Haxil Beasts.

The Haxil Beasts were the perfect basis for his war beasts. They were already large, standing over fifteen feet high. They were also tremendously resilient, possessing substantial regeneration as well as an extremely high resistance to fire.

The first thing he did was the boost the immunity. He also strengthened and broadened it until it could resist plasma and electricity as well. Testing revealed even staff cannons barely singed it's skin. As part of the defensive measures he also thickened it's skin and hardened it. This granted it a high resistance to projectile and melee weapons as well.

It's intellect was sacrificed to increase it's reflexes. It was also augmented with the bioelectric organs. Between the two it was capable of reacting with blinding speed.

It's considerable magic was all redirected. Some of it had gone towards it's resistances, but the rest initially went towards augmenting its strength. Sadly, he was forced to redirect much of it towards strengthening it's body or it would have torn itself apart from the speed it moved at.

To compensate somewhat he also increased it's strength by compacting its form until it resembled that of a gorilla. Between the twisted legs and hunched back it barely stood ten feet high. The end result was a form strong enough to damage a Kara Kesh shield. It could also pick up and throw a Death Glider.

Lobotomizing it and installing a droid brain allowed them to test out the prototype's body to destruction. Based on the readings tactical droids designed a combat style for it. He worked with Warren to develop equipment for it as well as incorporate them into its combat style.

The war beast wore heavy armor, especially around the neck and head. Due to it's regeneration, if the brain was damaged it's brain would regrow and it would go berserk. The heavy armor would eventually contain a series of microrepulsors built into the armor to allow to leap much further. It also housed a shield generator as well as the power generators for it's weapons.

A pair of thick bat-like wings sprouted from it's back. Not strong enough to fly naturally, the armor coating it contained additional microrepulsors to enable it to glide. It also housed larger shield generators, although it couldn't use them while it was gliding.

It was armed with a vaguely diamond-shaped heater-style vibroshield on each arm. The bottom edges were sharpened and it was gripped sideways, allowing it to be used as a spear or axe. The enormous shields also housed a pair of plasma cannons under them, mounted on either side of it's hands.

The shields also contained a pair of smaller shield generators. Between them, its wings and armor it was capable of layering three energy shields around itself and a small area around it.

Eric felt the creature was complete and only needed to name it. Since Xander had decided his empire would be Greek themed, he decided to use a creature from their mythology. Because of it's appearance, he called it a Gargoyle.

* * *

Xander meanwhile likewise felt very proud of his latest creation. He had decided to design a melee weapon for his second body, to go along with the more primitive image invoked by it's armor He also wanted a powerful weapon that wasn't blatantly technological.

He had started with the Sith Tremor Sword. It was a vibroblade based upon the bastard sword. It relied on alchemy primarily for most of it's properties. With it instead created from a blend of trinium and naquadah, alchemy could be applied towards imbuing it with alternative properties.

Using a combination of runes and alchemy the vibrating blade was made to generate intense localized sound waves. The sound waves damaged anything they touched equivalently to being hit by a glancing shot from a sonic disrupter. With a sound neutralizing device the sound waves were kept contained around the blade, only letting out a deep hum. The sound scattered when it was swung or struck something, making the blade 'scream'.

The blade was also made extremely conductive and a shock module included. As with a force pike it would send a surge of electricity into a target with but a touch. With a touch of ultrachrome included, the edge would heat up rapidly. Between the electricity and heat it would char the flesh around any wounds it dealt. Through the use of alchemy he ensured the Naquadah would not explode if struck by an ion bolt, although it still greatly enhanced the shock charge.

Xander called it the Stormblade. He had also created a variant based upon the force pike. The resulting Stormlance was more dangerous dealing damage equivalent to a full shot from a sonic rifle upon impact. He used the dimensional folding tech to allow the shaft to collapse so it could be wielded as a short sword.

He decided his second body was ready for combat. The scans had revealed that none of his stolen technology had been moved in several days. At a whisper from the Force he delayed his assault. He wondered what opportunity was about to present itself.

* * *

It was not long after that he received a message from Lilah. SG-1 had shown up and asked for an appointment. Xander thought about it for a moment and then had her send them in. He watched as the four people he recognized from before filed into his office. The scanners had revealed they were unarmed.

"Ah, the SG-1. Honestly I hadn't expected for you to show back up. I am glad you left Clemens behind, as irritated as I am, I would have likely killed him. I supposed that means you aren't involved in this bit of recent unpleasantness either?"

At their look of confusion he displayed his map. "Over the past month my droids have been systematically destroyed and stolen. Their remains have made their way to these locations. Each is a corporation with close ties to the government. Are you here to officially declare war?"

O'Neill was the one to respond. "We had nothing to do with that. We also didn't know about it. I can assure you that there will be an investigation on the matter. So there is no reason to blow up all of those companies."

"So what reason do I have to let my enemies survive?"

Teal'c sneered, "Spoken like a Sith."

Xander jabbed his finger at a particular spot on the map. "That is Area 51." Another jab. "Cheyenne Mountain Complex." Another jab. "Washington DC. Each of those locations showed up positive on my scans for my droid remains. Now tell me why I shouldn't wage war against the United States?"

While SG-1 responded he subtly probed them for any information he may have lacked. As he had though, they had nothing to do with the attacks. Interestingly, they were not aware of any sites on Earth where Goa'uld technology was present save their base in Cheyenne.

Not needing any more time, Xander waved off their apologies and agreed to peaceful coexistance or something along those lines, having stopped paying attention to the meeting anymore. He had dug all the information he needed out of them already. When they brought up the issue of technology and trade he ended the meeting and made an appointment for the next morning. He had plans to make.

The next morning he had his terms ready. Several of his terms required them to bring in Gen Hammond on a conference call and eventually the president.

A tentative agreement had been hammered out with the Stargate Command. In return for getting access to their data and samples of alien technology, he would agree to provide scouting droids for their use. He knew they would be working on studying them covertly, but didn't care.

He agreed to defend Earth in the event of an attack and even agreed to ferry some probes and satellites for NASA around the solar system. He also agreed to create a small military company called Xander Arms that would provide advanced weapons for the SG teams.

He had refused to provide over a certain level of technology until Earth was united. He had no wish to trigger a devastating world war. He needed most of it intact for his future plans.

* * *

SG-1 was amazed at the speed Darth Xander moved once the paperwork was all signed. Within a few days new equipment started appearing. The Nightweave armor was amazing. Lighter and stronger then their old armor. They hadn't been aware the company even made armor. So far it had been marketed as very expensive protective business clothes. They also hadn't realized Xander owned that company.

With the armor came new weapons. The plasma rifles were easily recognized as mostly rebuilt staff weapons. However they were easier to wield and came with a scope. The focal coils in the barrel increased the penetrating power of the bolt as well as tripled it's range. The energy pistols were also mostly just reworked Zat guns, but much easier to wield. The difference seemed to be that the pistol could fire a two second beam if the trigger was held down.

They had also been surprised by the droids. They had expected Imperial Probe Droids. The Watchman droids they received were far superior. Although they were clearly based off the Viper Imperial Probe Droid given their profiles. They had been scaled up massively, standing almost ten feet tall. Xander had additionally silenced the broadcasting unit and then integrated Goa'uld technology to provide power and shields. The blaster cannon had also been replaced by a plasma cannon.

Every member of the team received a powerful commlink capable of linking to the Watchman and each other. They were also equipped with a small sensor package. It would record data from around them as well as from the droid. Additionally the droid could access their sensors and recordings. They hoped this would prevent another incident like Jackson's kidnapping.

* * *

With confirmation that the government didn't know about the Seattle site, Xander began making plans. Detailed scans revealed numerous weapons as well as a Goa'uld present. When he had found that out he had wasted no time sending in all fifteen Spartoi he currently possessed.

The shuttle used it's ion cannon to black out the entire area for miles around. The Spartoi rushed in afterwards. The cultists were dropped easily as they just stood there confused. Xander realized the ion blast had to have negated the effects of the Nish'ta within them. The Goa'uld, using the name Seth Fargough was captured after a fight that leveled the building.

The Spartoi took everything the scanner picked up and they left as quickly as they had arrived. Xander wasted no time before Force draining the Goa'uld. Setesh apparently had been set up very comfortably with a large cache of items. Most importantly, Setesh knew how to manufacture Nish'ta.

As Xander marveled at the usefulness of Nish'ta for his plans he realized that the memories he had stolen had only given him a headache instead of knocking him out. He realized the more memories he possessed the easier it was to integrate new ones.

Satisfied with haul, he decided to leave the last cache of Goa'uld technology alone for now. Glastonbury Tor was much too public to search discretely and not worth the hassale of going public. He'll just wait until he didn't need Earth anymore before taking it.

* * *

With the preliminary melding of the technologies completed the research team had broken up. Willow had moved on to researching the items gathered from Antarctica. The Gate had been setup within the last garrison base and guarded by a few of the Spartoi and other defenses. The rest of the material was apparently far more advanced then her current understanding of Goa'uld technology. She believed that it may instead be Ancient technology, like the healing device recovered from Central America.

Xander copied their research and implanted it into Lira's team since none of them wished to work with her. He had not been surprised to note that Lira's team was actually competing with each other. Bevel and Umak were both creating their own designs. Since it was a perfect test, he dosed each of them with Nish'ta and then forced them to work together.

Warren was working on further improving the Dark Trooper armor. He was adapting them to take advantage of the crystalline matrices they used in place of circuitry. He was also doing to same to several of the current weapon designs.

Xander had drafted Kooloota for his own newest project. With the aid of Kooloota, Xander focused on designing new ships. They would take advantage of the hybrid technology and would be made in mind for performance rather then economic feasibility.

The Givin had a flair for improving ideas and a meticulous nature that spotted potential design flaws early enough to compensate with minimal effort. Already he had been convinced to send word to Lira to adopt the Eclipse design for his new flagship. He had also ended up sending an additional list of requirements several times since.

With Kooloota to improve his work, Xander focused on streamlining the process of upgrading his fleet. He realized that with the infusions of new technology that many of his ships will become outdated. Indeed, already all of his imperial designs could be considered so. The work he did on the TIE Defender was a prime example. With the inclusion of Goa'uld tech, specifically trinium and Naquadah power genrators, TIE fighter designs were one of the least viable ships.

He needed a way to keep his fleet, when he finally develops one, current with his tech base. Between them, they created a very sophisticated set of programs he called the Uplift Protocols. It would go through his database and apply a specific set of changes to every blueprint in there. The altered designs would all be saved separately and the originals would still be available, but it should make adapting his fleet composition much easier.

So far he had several changes, the biggest being the use of his Warminds for all small craft. Getting rid of the required internal volume would free up enormous amounts of space. The conversion to Naquadah power supplies and crystalline circuitry could save almost as much room as well in some designs. The additional space would be filled with additional shield generators and armor.

The other changes included the replacement of mose of the the ship's armor, hull and internal structure with trinium. The last change included was the inclusion of a networked tactical droid brains to run every single weapon or turret on the ship.

Xander started the Uplift Protocols up and carefully monitored the results. Testing a few of the designs he noticed that it had automatically modified all the ship energy weapons as well and the simulations for them were amazing. Blaster cannons were every bit as powerful as heavy laser cannons now and heavy laser cannons were equivalent to the orignal light turbolasers.

Satisfied, he leaves to program to run it's course. He does up up a few specific ship designs since he intends to use them eventually. The Skipray Blastboat was to be his offical gunboat. Other then a few minor tweaks, the design seemed perfect. Although he did change the armament and made a note to check for that in the future. With the Goa'uld tech his energy weapons never needed refueling so were much more efficient then missiles or torpedoes.

The laser cannons and the launchers left enough space to add in a trio of turrets housing four autoblasters. They would be fully capable of suppressive fire against fighters as well as provide flak. Testing the final design showed it had almost twice as much firepower. The defense though was where it truly shone. The armor was fully as strong as that of a Carrack Light Cruiser, which was famous for it's durability. The shields, while only half again as powerful as before, had an amazing recovery rate being 400% faster then previously.

He decided to renamed it the Medusa-class Gunship. With it's capabilities it would be ideal for several roles. It would also allow him to retire over a dozen different types of small craft. He made an official fleet unit list and then added it to it.

Scrolling through the various fighter designs he looked for a replacement for his beloved TIE fighters. He wanted something that looked as striking as they were. A memory had him bringing up the schematics for Prince Xizor's Virago. Looking at the specs, he decided the design would suit his needs perfectly.

Although he did go back and update the Uplift Protocols to replace engines and shields with the best that would fit in the hull. Without having to worry about patents and costs he could afford to use the very best in everything.

To make his starfighters terrifying, he replaced its laser cannons with a pair of twin-barreled long range, light turbolasers. The collapsible barrel extensions increased it's range even further. He did manage to fit in the miniature tractor beam from the TIE Defender and updated the Uplift Protocols to include it in all his small craft if it didn't have one already.

He was more then satisfied with the simulation results. The Harpy-class Starfighter as he named it, had very decent firepower and was incredibly fast. With the large fuel pods in each wing replaced by shield generators and armor it was almost as tough as his Medusas. It's shield wasn't as strong, but it did recover much faster. He was more then happy to add the Harpy to his fleet list.

The last ship he checked was the Imperial Landing Craft. He liked the ship, but he wanted a new shuttle that was representative of his empire and not the Galactic Empire. He ended up extensively remodelling the ship before he was satisfied.

He added a smaller upper level onto the cargo area, thickening the body but shortening the central wing at the same time. He transferred all the shield generators into the upper level as well as the power generators. In addition an upgraded sensor suite a full support tactical array was installed. With all of its new support systems the ship could function as a battlefield command center.

The engines were replaced with much stronger and larger engines allowing it easily to keep up with most starfighters. An elaborate array of repulsorlift generators ensured it could hover effortlessly and steadily. The thickened wings allowed for the stronger shield generators to work to their full capacity as well as containing additional emitters. The shields had ended up being twice as strong as before with a recovery rate an order of magnitude faster.

All of the ships weapons were also replaced. A series of six retractable turrets containing an advanced twin autoblaster and a light particle cannon were housed on the top of the ship. They were placed on the corners and above the assault ramps. A pair of anti-personnel blaster turrets had also been mounted on either side of the loading doors.

In addition a turret housing a long range twin light turbolaser was placed underneath the cockpit. Above and slight behind the cockpit was another turret housing a boosted medium ion cannon along with a pair of tractor beams.

With the hull being replaced by one made of trinium the ship weighted considerably less. Even the much thick armor didn't offset this and it's ability to carry cargo benefited. While the cargo hold had enough space freed up to increase it's capacity by only 40%, the size of the cargo containers it could carry had almost doubled.

The ship was designed to replace most of his shuttles and small cargo ships. It also would replace a majority of his ground vehicles, both command and assault. Since the turrets were all capable of depressing to fire straight downwards it would also serve as a replacement for light bombers. Due to it's versatility he dubbed it the Chimera-class Assault Shuttle.

Immediately afterwards he assigned a number of Architect droids to construct one for him. While the Imperial Landing Craft had served him well, he wanted to fly in something he had a hand in creating.

* * *

Kooloota wasn't xenophobic, but he was fiercely devoted to his race. No, Kooloota was a patriot. He cared for the fate of his race and would not see it die out. For that reason more than any other he loyally served.

Darth Xander had somehow sensed his desire and promised to eventually bring others here. He had even asked for a list. Even if Xander didn't bring more of his people here, there were plenty of samples still. With cloning technology available, it was only a matter of time before the Givin race rose once more.

A small cultural change was a small price to pay to save his race. From his cell he had heard how the mysterious Yuuzhan Vong had been exterminating all life in the galaxy. A small prayer incorporated into the basis for their new language was a perfectly reasonable price. To the being who gave their race a second chance he would prove the Givin were grateful.

He planned to eventually upload himself into a positronic brain so that he could continue to guide them. After all, he had risen to his position on merit. He wouldn't feel satisfied until his people could replace him through their own skill.

In their own way, his people were similar to the Sith. And Xander was forging an empire in that image. For now he would contribute where he could. When the Sith Imperium rose in the future, he would be there to ensure his people rose with it.

* * *

That night Xander's shuttle took off. Xander's armored second body along with the Inquisitor were the only passengers. He had checked on his design team and they were all working together seamlessly. He was glad for the confirmation of the effects of Nish'ta despite the memories of it being used.

When they arrived at their first target, the Inquisitor performed flawlessly. Using the gun of command he gathered everyone in the house together. Xander steered his body in and used the gas to ensure their loyalty.

The majority was just told to ignore them and support the person they had come for. Howard Schwarzman owned a number of companies including two that contained samples from his droids. After the brainwashing he Force drained him.

He turned out to be a goldmine of information. The NID was apparently compromised at the highest levels. He and a group of businessmen were part of a group called the Committee. They were all working together to steal alien technology.

Xander updated his list of targets. Throughout the rest of the week continued to conduct raids against the members of the Committee. With their accrued economic power he would be much better placed for any future plans.

Meanwhile Xander was using any downtime to work on his third body. Piloted by the former Goa'uld Setesh he knew exactly what he wanted this one for. He carefully implanted a wealth of Force training with a specific goal in mind.

Stygium crystals were a very unique formation and one of many types of kyber crystal. As such, their internal structure was much too complex to be formed by a molecular furnace. However, kyber crystals could be created by one if combined with a very draining and time consuming set of Force techniques.

Xander hadn't had the time to devote himself to producing more crystals, but now with an additional body, he didn't need to. The new body was well versed in all the required Force techniques and knew enough engineering to operate the machinery. He instructed it to continuously craft crystals and left it supervised by a droid.

With his future plans involving the former Hathor, Xander realized he needed named for his additional bodies, if only to keep track of them in his mind easier. Going with the Greek theme, he named his armored secondary form Ares. Instead of naming the others he named the projects they were involved with. Hephaestus and Demeter only had a single member so far, but he planned on expanding them rapidly.


	10. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

After a long series of meetings and a lot of research, Xander felt that he was ready to once again use the Ritual of Janus. The faint lingering weakness had passed weeks ago and he had taken steps to hopefully make the ritual less draining.

Mass sacrifices were a reliable method of generating large amounts of power and his memories contained numerous examples of such. He was able to create an elaborate setup within his Los Angeles base on a piece of property he had purchased for that purpose.

The stone ziggurat was covered in various sith runes designed to focus energy. The runes were inlaid in Naquadah and enchanted with a variation of the one laid on the Effigy of Proserpexa. The enchantment allowed the Naquadah to enhance magical energy to same way it enhanced electricity and other energy types. He had tested it and blood magic had thankfully not triggered an explosion.

Just in case he had paid to have a full hundred people sacrificed for this ritual. He realized he had been dangerously weakened the last time and was fortunate it wasn't permanent. He was taking no chances with this one. Especially considering what he was summoning.

He was planning on summoning a Sith. While he was also summoning many others, a proficient darksider was a terrible threat. Especially considering who he was summoning.

Sorzus Syn. By those who know of her, she was considered the mother of sith alchemy. She took it further then any before. She created creatures and artifacts that no other sith ever managed to replicate. The Telos Holocron was but one of her creations.

As much he wanted her working for him he couldn't take the chance. As such, the person wearing her costume was strapped down next to a cage of a Ysalamiri. Droids were also present and instructed to stun her immediately. The room she was in was also sealed from the outside and filled with explosives as a last resort. The last precaution was the use of a lucid host to make the summoning temporary.

When Xander conducted the ritual, he felt almost let down. The ysalamiri formed perfectly and Sorzus was stunned easily. He wasted no time in cutting off her head and walking out of the range of the ysalamiri. Before the head fully died, he used Dark Healing to keep the brain viable. He then used Force drain to copy every piece of alchemical knowledge she possessed.

As Xander walked over to another chamber he was glad for the cumulative memories of the Goa'uld he possessed. Otherwise he was sure that he would have passed out. While Sorzus had barely been over two hundred years old, the sheer breadth of knowledge she had possessed on the Force was staggering. Mentally she had incorporated everything she knew about the Force to alchemy so he had copied far more then intentioned.

Sorzus had not been the only Force wielder he had summoned, merely the most dangerous. Kor Vastor had been summoned for his mastery of Plant Surge and Beast Control. He had also been the one to create and wield vibroshields in battle. His fighting style would prove useful for Eric's project.

Rokur Gepta had been the other Force user summoned. The last and greatest of the Sorcerers of Tund, he was also incredibly skilled in Force Illusions. Fortunately he was physically frail and many of his powers would not work on droids.

After absorbing both of them Xander realized they both had the same problem as Sorzus. Worse, he realized their memories were more vivid then he was used to. Annoyed, he meditated after ordering everything else summoned stunned or restrained.

It took most of a day to integrate the memories. Some quick experimentation did reveal a benefit from it though. While he was far from complete mastery, he was already proficient with the skills he had stolen. Satisfied with the outcome he checked the other summoned beings.

He tore apart the half dozen instances of the Vuffi Raa droid he had summoned. While he wanted several of it's abilities, he'd rather be safe and try to study it's remains. Deeming the rest harmless enough, to took all of them back to the Tatooine base.

The Givin he released to Kooloota, who appeared overjoyed and bowed to him several times. The various species of engineers were kept stunned and the computers they carried, filled with the greatest inventions of their race were fed into the computer banks. The various other species, summoned for their biology were preserved and placed in storage.

That taken care of, Xander turned to the last two groups. The Sharu were a relatively unknown race mentioned only a few times in the books and comics. The few examples of their technology were incredibly advanced. They also didn't seem to use computers, so he had instead summoned a group of scientists and engineers from their race.

After draining them, a process taking a few days, Xander was largely disappointed. While their industrial capabilities were amazing, they didn't seem to possess too much else. They possessed little in the way of travel technology, having very primitive hyperdrives and sublight engines. They were pacifistic, so possessed almost no weapons.

The few advanced technologies they did possess were significant. They had mastered phase-shifting to the point of allowing them to use quantum armor strength materials into their architecture. They had also used crystalline circuitry, similar to the Goa'uld. The last technology was the most important from Xander's point of view.

They had developed interdiction fields with vast ranges and power, making his current gravity well projectors look like toys. They had also found a way to concentrate the field to create the subnuclear 'knots' of space-time required to create repulsorlift generators. Without it, he would have had to create a truly massive factory space station around a blackhole to create them.

Overall satisfied with the Sharu, Xander imprinted the information on Willow. She ran to copy it into the databanks before experimenting with their new options. He then turned to the last group and the one he had wanted the most.

He took his time absorbing the Spaari. He didn't want any problem to arise from missing any detail. Their cloning technology had never been successfully replicated and from the books were capable of remarkable things. With their ability to rapidly grow and age clones several projects would become much more viable.

It would have been another month before they could see if Eric's Gargoyle project worked. Even with it's rapid growth and gestation, they were still left waiting for it to finish growing. The initial tests and all the simulations were positive, but were no guarantee of success. With the cloning tubes, they could be grown in hours instead of weeks.

* * *

Lilah was feeling very satisfied with herself. The ritual had gone off perfectly and Xander had seemed very happy with the results as he left. The prestige she had accrued within the firm for flawlessly pulling off a mass sacrificial ritual within city limits had been heady.

Another venture had taken off as well. Nightweave had proven to be immensely popular. The demand for it around the world was very high. Primarily used to create armored formal weapon, it was affordable only to the wealthy. It was fast proving to be a statement about status as well as fashion.

Pete had also expanded the options with providing the original thread. Much weaker then Nightweave, it still stronger then any other fiber on the market. It's looks more then made up for any deficiencies, resembling as it did spun gold. He promised to work on other colors, which would only increase profits.

The diviners had finally gotten back to her. It had cost quite a bit, but they had finally found something that met all of the requirements Xander had laid out. The game Starcraft was scheduled to come out at the end of next month and they predicted it would be a huge success. Starcraft was owned by a small company called Blizzard.

Even better, Blizzard was owned by CUC International. After a bit of digging and espionage she had found Blizzard to be a prime investment opportunity. It seemed CUC had been engaging in accounting fraud. With the right amount of pressure and blackmail, Xander could just buy Blizzard outright.

She smirked as she inwardly danced with joy. She loved playing such high stakes games and Xander had given her so very many pieces. The fact that he had managed to somehow acquire leverage over so many prominent businessmen was impressive. She had never realized how wide his net really was. From that perspective, the conversation when she informed him about the game was particularly intriguing.

Xander had made several odd requests, including the location of a Machida demon. She warned him of the danger of having your prosperity blessed by such a demon as they inevitably rebounded. He assured her he knew what he was doing and asked a series off odd questions concerning it.

Lilah ended up having to bring in a demonologist to answer them. She stood there and wondered why on Earth he cared about the demons eating habits and biology. Afterwards she ended up having to locate one for him against her better judgment.

She wondered what Xander was planning with the demon. He had started setting up a lot of meetings with it and she had been forbidden from attending any of them. She had seen him dropping off a number of droids that were well armed, presumably for it's safety. She hoped he was being careful. She couldn't afford for him to crash and burn.

* * *

Warren was ecstatic. With the first World Devastator completed it was only a matter of time before the Sith Imperium began expanding. Xander had promised to let him lead the first fleet that went out to conquer. He was looking forward to it and had been playing tons of RTSs in preparation.

He had also asked for and been granted the Executor. It seems that with all of the changes and new technologies he had been planning on scrapping it anyway. Warren couldn't believe him. It was the Executor! Darth Vader's feet had walked that bridge. Or Darth Xander's as the case may be.

As soon as Xander's new flagship was completed and the refit done, he would claim the Executor as his flagship. Thankfully he had kept the ship from being gutted and only had the bare minimum applied to the ship from the Uplift Protocols. Mostly those were the power plants and upgraded weapons and shields. He didn't mind those and could always scale them down to fit the originals specs.

He was going to be assigned a World Devastator to make him the more traditional manufacturing plants. They would be used to secure planets after he had conquered him. They were going to be enormous so he didn't have to spend weeks waiting for them to finish. They would primarily produce more Spartoi, but also be capable of making starfighters and orbital mines.

Another major item the internal factories would be setup for was Overwatch Droids. A scaled up version of the Watchman droids, they easily stood twenty feet tall and over ten wide. They contained an improved hypercomm relay and beacon. Both of which, thanks to the subspace communicator found on the Goa'uld ship, no longer needed relay satellites. The Holonet would life again! He was also looking forward to being able to still access Earth's iinternet.

Their armaments consisted of a single turbolaser and ion cannon. However, they also contained a tactical network to coordination up to a score of orbital mines. Paired with their sophisticated long-range sensors and they could monitor and defend a planet with ease.

The main starfighter the factories would produce were TIE Fighters. After much pleading, he had convinced both Xander and Willow to allow him to use their design. Upgraded and then augmented by Goa'uld technology they were much more advanced then before. With the Warmind project improving their performance, the aesthetics were almost irrelevant. At least so he had argued.

Warren knew the TIE fighters wouldn't be a match for any of the new small craft Xander had designed and was currently upgrading, but still wanted them. He just couldn't resist the idea of actually commanding the Executor and launching TIE fighters against his enemies. For that reason he had successfully argued to keep the most iconic of the war machines stored within along with their delivery shuttles. He was also planning on using the original Phase II Dark Troopers when possible for their resemblance to the original stormtroopers.

He figured the only reason he won his arguments was because of Xander's own decision to have a theme. Ancient Greece seemed a bit odd, personally he would have gone with a Roman theme. Just in case Xander ended up changing his mind, he planned on hunting down all of the Roman themed Goa'uld he can find as well as the Greek ones he was actually tasked to destroy. He figured Xander would thank him when he realized Rome was much better then Greece.

He had been tempted to construct a mechanical relay that resembled Darth Vader to act as his figurehead, but resisted, knowing Xander might kill him for that. He'd have to settle for a regular imperial uniform. At least they hadn't been replaced, even if they had been modified to use the new silks Eric had invented.

* * *

Xander checked over the status of the various projects. Things were finally beginning to pick up and he needed to make sure he stayed on top of everything.

Thankfully the process became self sustaining after a certain point, with the World Devastator working with the Architects to expand itself. Now that the first one was fully upgraded it was helping the Architects construct another. By the time the moon was fully consumed he expected he'll have at least several dozen of them.

He doubted he'll have that many any time soon. He fully planned on siphoning off several to start on other projects as soon as possible. He also knew they hadn't had any of the new technologies integrated into their designs yet. He had pulled Umak in order to work on the new design since he had created the originals.

The new version would incorporate both Goa'uld and Sharu technology fully into it's design. It would likewise be capable of creating them. In particular, it will possess the gravity engines necessary to create various phase-locked materials and incorporate much of the same material in itself. It would be much slower to replicate, but nearly indestructible. Umak, as much a political animal as a brilliant engineer, had named it Project Telchine.

The Architects meanwhile were busy resuming the construction of the Deepdocks. With the World Devastator briefly lending it's aid he fully expected them to be finished within a week. Once they were finished they could begin working on his newest ship.

With the Sharu technology he had an idea and had promptly pulled in Bevel to make it a reality. Bevel had worked wonders and the result was the Charybdis-class Battle Cruiser. There was still an enormous amount of work for Bevel to do, but much of the basic design was done. Kooloota and his team were working to help him finish the project.

The Charybdis was based upon a Hapan Battle Dragon. The dual disk shaped ship was expanded until it reached a full kilometer in size. A second ovoid, identical to the ovoid upper hull, was also added to the bottom. The now central circular disk was almost 700 meters wide.

The central disk housed the primary engines of the ship. Using Goa'uld technology the engines were housed completely internally. Even with as many upgrades as possible, it was still much slower then any star destroyer.

With the engines completely hidden the ship was much less vulnerable. Phase-locked material was to be used to armor the entire hull. It was also planned to be used in the support pillars and the rotational joints. They also protect the interdictor field generator.

The crowning achievement of the ship was the Sharu interdictor field generator that it carried. It was much more sophisticated then a gravity well generator in every way. It required much less room and wasn't limited to a single projection arc. It also outranged it, able to block an entire system instead of a battlefield.

Instead of a single rotational axis jointing the ship there was four connecting each disk to the next for a total of eight. Each rotational axis was smaller, housing half the weapons of the original. Despite this, they could fire even faster due to their faster recharge rates. The resulting stream of energy was almost a solid beam when aimed at a single target. It could even focus up to six of the eight axis turrets on a single target if needed.

The defensive weapons were replaced by boosted blaster cannons and ion cannons. The cannons were placed all along the hull in three concentric rings. The heavier weapons were removed to allow room for extending the hangers.

The upper and lower disks housed extensive hanger bays. To take advantage of the interdictor field a new series of repulsorcraft was designed. It was basically a starfighter with a repulsor engine instead of a sublight drive. Through extensive use of loading racks several thousand of them along with hundreds of additional small craft would be carried.

The repulsorcraft, named Scylla-class Interceptors, were based off the Slave 1. However it was significantly smaller, only standing twenty feet tall. Due to it's large repulsor engines, it was incredibly fast, outpacing the Harpy Fighters by a significant degree. It was also almost as tough since it didn't need space for a sublight drive.

The weapons consisted of six twin-barreled autoblasters. They were lined up in pairs along the body underneath the cockpit. The turrets housing them were angled so that when it was floating on its back they could still be used. The wings were also able to fold back and housed additional maneuvering jets. Combined with it's ability to float on it's back it was easily capable of traveling through a stargate.

He planned to have them replace most of the other war machines housed in the garrison bases. He also planned for it to be used as a supporting war machine for his own planetary forces. These included his planned gate assault squads.

The SGC didn't realize it, but he had began running his own Stargate missions. So far they were primarily follow up missions to the SGC's own missions. Most of the time he sent a few Watchmen droids through and followed it up with an Overwatch droid.

Several dead worlds, rendered uninhabitable for one reason or another he had marked. He planned to eventually terraform or harvest those worlds. The Stargates were still remarkable pieces of technology that Willow had yet to reverse engineer.

* * *

Although she hadn't had any luck with the Stargates, Willow had successfully studied the equipment gathered from Antarctica. The metal throne was a neural control interface and the squid robots were actually missiles. Testing had revealed them to be incredibly sophisticated missiles. The warhead seemed to consist of a mixture of Baradium and a new metal based upon Naquadah.

The Baradium seems to have been artificially engineered. Which was a remarkable feat considering they didn't have molecular furnaces. The new metal however, was terrifying. Initial testing of it had destroyed the moon Deimos. Without the Baradium lining to contain it, the explosion had been enormous.

Other tests had shown the new metal to be both unstable and volatile. All further testing was halted until a new facility could be constructed further away from his only base. The remaining missiles had been loaded onto a shuttle and stationed in deep space. Willow had dubbed the new metal Naquadium after all the other radioactive metals.

She had also woken up the female who was frozen. Creating a cure for the disease she carried proved almost impossible. Testing of it shown it to be remarkably virulent and adaptive to an unusual degree. In the end even Pete couldn't cure her. Since she had asked, Xander used alchemy to slightly alter the woman to remove the disease. The physical changes were slight, other then instilling a variation of Nish'ta permanently inside her.

The woman was incredibly intelligent, learning Basic in only hours very friendly. The changes had held true and while she was friendly she did sound a bit like a religious fanatic at times when it came to Darth Xander. Willow had named her Zinnia after the sister she had always wanted.

She didn't seem to be decreasing her learning rate and was studying the various tech bases without problems. Willow had gotten Xander to implant the various tech bases into her mind and Zinnia had adapted to that knowledge almost immediately.

Interestingly Zinnia had also displayed several psychic powers. They were varied and seemed to encompass the full spectrum of abilities only excluding telepathy. Willow was currently working with her to study them. Xander was looking forward to the results.

It was in the midst of this that he received a request from SGC. Xander didn't mind aiding them and promptly sent a shuttle. A bomb growing spontaneously within someone sounded like Belia's technovirus and he wanted a sample.

The bomb was easily extracted from the little girl, whose name he never bothered getting. He sent her back after erasing all of her memories after she landed. They could already view his base so that part wasn't secret.

Experiments revealed that it didn't convert flesh. Instead the entire device was present, but so finely distributed that it didn't resemble a machine at all. Instead scans would just show elevated amounts of trace elements lodged in their tissue. Disappointed, he sent everything to Eric.

Realizing that Earth was definitely not safe, Xander began making plans. While it would take a long time, he sent an Architect droid through the Stargate to each of his marked worlds with instructions to replicate. He sent a pair of Overwatch droids and several defensive satellites to watch over his investments. He also instructed them to bury their Stargates for now. He didn't want anything finding them by accident.


	11. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Xander breathed deeply in an effort to calm himself. Ever since the first Spaari Cloning Tube had been setup he had experimented extensively with the Ritual of Janus. He was now preparing for his first mass summoning. Fortunately he found the blank cloned bodies worked even better then broken homeless people or children for anchoring his summons.

When the timer went off, he started his chant even as thousands of droids massacred the stockpiled clones to power the ritual. When it worked, he laughed as he felt that he was one step closer to being independent of Earth.

He took a few minutes to watch the previously summoned Ugnaughts talk with their respective tribes. As he watched them slowly file onto the waiting transports, he grinned at his success. Red Sky had been an enormous project.

Waiting until he had enough World Devastators to begin working on other projects had been sheer torture. He hadn't been willing to completely wait and instead taken the original as soon the second was able to start working on itself.

The first thing he had done was to finish up all the construction for the rest of his currently stalled projects. Tatooine Base was now a sprawling collection of smaller bases that extended across hundreds of miles. It also had another modular base setup for running an Interdictor Field across the system.

While the Deepdocks constructed a pair of Charybdis Dreadnoughts, the World Devastator created the Scylla Interceptors for them as well as the Tatooine Base. It's last task was to create the beginnings of a greatly expanded Cloud City.

By that point Bevel had completed his work and his four World Devastators had been reborn as Telchines. The redesigned World Devastators took advantage of all of his new technologies. It was only three kilometers tall and a two kilometers wide. In shape it was a simple cylinder. The bottom was a ring of the strongest tractor beams possible all surrounding the central loading bay that led to the improved molecular furnaces.

It created items at least twice as fast as the original World Devastators and could create anything up to a kilometer. It was covered the the strongest armor possible, along with planetary shields. However, it was fairly slow and didn't possess any weapons, not being intended as a war machine.

The numerous repulsor factories had been greatly needed at that point and everything else had halted as they were setup. The bulk of the new repulsors were sent to Cloud City in preparation for it's expansion.

Two of the Telchines were continuing to replicate, while the other two were modifying the Executor in preparation of Warren's crusade. Seeing as he was investing so much into this, Xander had used Nish'ta on him and hidden an Inquisitor on his ship.

The summonings had been conducted virtually daily, with Xander realizing he needed more and more people to staff his fledgling government. He drew upon his memories and the ones he stole for recommendations on who to summon and then used Nish'ta to make sure they were loyal. Thanks to that, most of his original staff had teams of people aiding them.

But an empire needed a population, and thus project Red Sky. After reading about the Ugnaughts and summoning and negotiating with the leaders, he had a deal. The Ugnaughts would be protected from slavery and allowed to become citizens and in return they would alter a few of their traditions. They would worship him along with their other gods and all blood duels would begin with a dedication to him. The dueling circles themselves were to be laid out in a specific manner.

The circle was comprised of a rune set that worked upon the participants. It subtly aided anyone who was loyal to him as well as channeled the bulk of the power directly towards him. While the power wasn't much, it should allow him to recover his reserves much faster.

Eventually he planned to have thousands of floating cities across Jupiter. With enough cities, the blood duels would end up feeding him continuously. If Janus's words were right, eventually his body wouldn't be able to contain the amount of power flowing in. Hopefully by that point, one of his experiments with secondary bodies will have born fruit.

* * *

Kooloota was feeling a warranted sense of satisfaction. It seems his loyalty had been rewarded and he was overjoyed to once more greet his closest friends. With the gift a Spaari cloning tube and a small bioresearch lab he had ensured the future of his race.

While the Ugnaughts were to be the workers for the Sith Imperium, the Givin were destined to be the administration. Their small population had been placed in charge of the new Cloud City. He had been involved in the planning stages of Red Sky and ensured his race was an integral part of it.

They had been gifted with a planet and he fully planned to one day colonize it. But for now they couldn't take the chance of drifting away from the Imperium and becoming dispensable. Already handfuls of numerous other species had already been summoned.

Already a series of nanny droids had been constructed to aid in the rearing of their children. The children, flash grown and imprinted with basic motor skills were already toddlers. Their race indeed owned Darth Xander a debt that would never be paid.

Towards that end they were all working tirelessly to help fully integrate all of the various technologies. Complicating this endeavor was the fact that yet another technological base had been incorporated recently.

The Tollan people had been rescued on Earth and SG-1 had sent Xander a message requesting passage for them. He had been very willing after reviewing the information from the SGC. He had wasted no time in using his own Stargate to rescue them.

Afterwards he had waited until they slept and stunned and Force drained each of them. Keeping them sedated for the few days until the Executor was ready was more then enough time to harmlessly gather all of their information.

He had also summoned several figures from their history to more thoroughly drain. Their planet had also thoroughly salvaged for everything of value, including it's Stargate. He had recovered a wealth of civilian and military infrastructure, most of it buried underground.

Delivering them to their planet had been easy enough and they had been moderately grateful. They looked down upon him still, considering him crude and barbaric, but he hadn't cared. He already had everything he could want from them.

Truthfully they hadn't possessed too much he was lacking. However, the two main technologies he had gained were incredibly useful. They had an alternative use of phase-shifting technology which allowed for targets to become immaterial. They also had shields which worked against both laser and ion bolts at the same time. He had immediately ordered the shields to be added to the Uplift Protocols.

He was pulled out of his thoughts by an alarm. Since it was the first time anything had come through his Stargate he decided to deal with it personally. He arrived to see SG-1 carefully standing with their hands in the air. He listened with amusement as they tried to talk to them in several languages.

"Your Goa'uld is fine, but your Galactic Basic needs work." Xander smirked at their surprise. "Welcome to Tatooine Base."

"We're on Tatooine?" Clemens seemed to both nervous and excited as he asked.

"No. That's the name of my current base." Xander paused and chuckled. "I was born on Tatooine. Growing up all I ever wanted was to leave. Now that I can never go back I find I miss it, if only slightly. Mars reminds me of it. Blame the name on nostalgia."

He answered a few questions about his Spartoi and base. He was purposefully vague and misleading in his answers. By the end of the conversation he had successfully caused them to think of him as a refugee from the splintered Empire from the books.

He eventually sent them back. He didn't bother erasing their memories as they hadn't been allowed to see much. They only really saw the gate room and a small conference room. He made a note to upgrade his gate defenses. He easily rerouted them back through a world they had previously visited so they could return home.

Having dealt with that, Xander checked up on the other teams. He already knew Kooloota would be busy with Project Red Sky. He was also working with Umak on upgrading their tech base thoroughly. Bevel and Lira were once again working on his flagship. Which had to be redesigned again after the newest tech infusion.

* * *

Warren had left on his crusade already. SGC had panicked for a time afterwards, trying to demand answers. He assured them the system was still protected and wondered how much longer it he had to deal with them.

Willow it seems was working from a skyhook. She also seemed to have figured out how to use Naquadium and was currently attempting to process it into Liquid Naquadium. If she was successful it would increase power generation by an order of magnitude from currently sized devices.

Eric had made the most progress. He had left the production of Nightweave and other various silks in the hands of Pete. With the Spaari Cloning Tube he had also completed the Gargoyle project quickly. He was currently working on a war hound. He was apparently attempting to improve Tuk'ata as well as cross them with Akk Hounds. He then planned to combine the results with the process to create Nek Battlehounds.

Pete had mostly finished working on the silk. He had made over a dozen colors and moved onto his next project. He was currently experimenting on both Neti and Shi'do biology. It seems they both possessed a biological method of storing mass in folded dimensional space. He was also studying werewolves believing their transformation was similar in origin.

Hal Rushton was a recent team leader. Leader of a small company who specialized in porting games it had been acquired by Lilah and the dozen employees exposed to Nish'ta. A small film company and a special effects company had also been purchased and consolidated under the new Blizzard Media division.

Anticipating the successful release of the game Starcraft he had started his plans for the franchise. The rest of Blizzard was already getting ready to switch to working on other games. Meanwhile he had several of his new employees officially began working on additional games. In fact, he had already had them, along with some droids, start to port and adapt games from the Star Wars universe. He also had people adapting various films for his franchise.

The ports were very slow going due to the primitive hardware currently available on Earth. He was unwilling to upgrade them just yet though. He also had time. He knew he would have to wait at least six months before releasing the next game. The films were progressing nicely and the first should be ready for theaters within a few weeks, although he was planning on releasing it in direct competition with the Star Wars movie.

He had seen a script for the newest movie and was appalled. They had butchered his story! They got hardly any of his background correct. He wasn't Jesus or some kind of chosen. And a droid army? No one had used droids since the time of Xim! He had decided to watch in case he could use anything, but for now would focus all of his energy on his Starcraft project.

Shaking himself out of thoughts, he decided to check over his personal projects. Through the use of Demeter, his Hathor based Goa'uld clone, he had successfully spawned thousands of new Goa'uld. He had used a handful to create additional secondary bodies for himself as well as staff his Stygium factory. The majority though were used in the his Sentinel project.

The basic concept was to create a cross between Imperial Sentinels and Jedi Temple Guards. He kept the uniform from the Jedi Temple Guards, although he colored it red with the markings done in black. They wielded a saberstaff with red blades as their primary weapon.

Using the Spaari Cloning Tubes and a genetics lab he grew a number of miraluka. He then took them and alchemically augmented it as much as possible while still keeping it viable for breeding. Using the cloning tubes again he quickly 'bred' generations of the altered miralukans. He alchemically altered each successive generation as well, piling mutations upon mutations.

The final result was a seven foot sithspawn who only vaguely resembled a giant miralukan. Despite being heavily muscled it still moved very gracefully. It was also completely covered in thick scales that were a dull red. Short claws tipped each of it's three fingers.

They were nearly mindless, but possessed great affinity for a few specific force powers. Each of the half dozen powers was greatly enhanced through genetic grafting and alchemy. They were then further amplified by their equipment, which was cybernetically implanted. Their cybernetics were also enchanted. Runes were set into both the equipment and their bodies, serving as passive enhancements.

They were also capable of a limited force bond and short term precognition. Combined with their implanted skills, they made superb bodyguards. He intended them to be his senatorial guard and royal guard in one. Their assignment would be considered a matter of prestige and rank.

To actually use their force powers and hold the implanted skills he controlled them with an implanted Goa'uld. The Goa'uld, while capable of serving as a secondary body were implanted with enough skills to run autonomously.

Xander planned on using them to gather information for him. Thankfully the Goa'uld were naturally eidetic and so would store everything they witnessed. Furthermore, Force-enhancement of their senses was one of the techniques they specialized in, vastly increasing the amount of information they gathered.

Xander was about to start testing Zinnia's biology when the first report came back. He laughed out loud when he saw the confusion the Sentinel's appearance caused the Goa'uld and Jaffa. He noted with interest that the ion cannons vaporized whatever they struck. He froze and slowly grinned as he was struck by a hilarious idea.

He quickly sent a message to Warren to continue to use the old empire style technology and not reveal anything else. He was to use ion weapons sparingly. Xander also ordered him to alter the Phase IIs with the designs for Guri, so that remains would register as human. He then rushed ahead and ordered Lira and Bevel to complete his Minotaur project. Warren would need those cruisers as soon as possible.

The Minotaur-class Battle Cruiser was based upon the ancient Harrower-class Battle Cruiser. However it was scaled up to a full kilometer. The majority of the space went to increasing the cargo area as well as the pair of planetary turbolasers housed in the 'horns' of the ship.

The hull bristled with other weapon placements, allowing it to outgun an Imperial Star Destroyer by a significant margin. The weapons load was balanced more evenly between ion cannons and turbolasers, with a third of them being ion cannons. There were also a large number of defensive laser and blaster cannons places across the ship.

It carried the same interdictor field as the Charybdis Battle Cruiser although a bit smaller. However, given Warren's current units, it was carrying TIE Interceptors instead of Scyllas. It also carried a full thousand of them in its storage racks.

He also ordered the creation of a number of X7 Factory Stations to be used to secure Warren a base of operations. They would also provide the fleets of TIEs that he would inevitably go through. A Telchine was also sent to discretely maintain his equipment and provide more if needed.

* * *

Xander immediately set about looking through his notes and the database for ideas. He planned to form a number of additional false empires to distract the Goa'uld.  
He would scatter them in abandoned corners of the galaxy and have them aggressively expand. They would each be distinctive in tactics and equipment, although mostly they would be using variations of old empire and goa'uld technology.

He pulled Eric off his current project to work on a new one. He was given a number of Bartokks and given free reign. He intended to implant all of them with modified Goa'uld and use them as the basis for a false empire.

He assigned them a Telchine along with the blueprints for the ships used by the Mandalorian Crusaders along with a few ancient sith designs such as the Sith Escort Gunship. They were all upgraded, but their insect-like appearance would remain very distinctive. He also gave them the Hornet-class Interceptor since the others didn't possess insectile starfighters. Since Warren's Empire would be using green lasers, he armed them primarily with blaster cannons and boosted blaster cannons.

The Telchine he assigned to the Primary Hive Cluster, as he decided to call them, was ordered to replicate several times and provide enormous productive capabilities. They wouldn't conquer worlds, instead they would be a scourge. They would kill all Goa'uld and Jaffa in an area and then strip it of all resources the Goa'uld were interested in.

He assigned greater resources to Pete and asked him to redirect his research slightly. He had a few ideas, but would take much greater resources to pull off.

In a nod to his childhood, he created the Sphere of United Nations. Based off the Gundam series, the federation consisted of a series of O'Neill habitats. The Telchine setup their habitats with all of the infrastructure for them to fill their role before returning.

The military consisted of several teams of Gundams. Xander admitted to himself that he had gone a bit overboard, spending hours recreating the various gundums and their weapons within the limitations he had set. From the various series, he had a fairly large cast of 'pilots' to lead the teams of more standardized gundams. They were programmed to act like the originals, including dialogue and tactics.

While their capabilities were greatly enhanced by the use of repulsors and trinium, it was the Deathgliders that allowed them to shine. Their self-contained propulsion systems when miniaturized and set throughout the body made it very maneuverable. With their tactical computers and sensors, they could dodge blasts from a staff cannon if far enough away.

They were equipped with a variety of weapons. Since he primarily made energy based versions they wouldn't run out of ammo. The weapons were also much more powerful then in the show, allowing them to engage Ha'taks if need be. The increased power caused the weapons to overheat easily and required a cooldown. He kept it flawed, wanting to keep a bit of the feel from the show.

In honor of his pet game he decided to build a Terran Dominion. The primary ship, the Behemoth Battlecruiser was armed with a planetary ion cannon as well as numerous missile launchers. The Wraith fighters were based upon the A-9 Interceptor. They didn't possess a cloaking field, but did have two missile launchers.

The missiles were an adaptation of the squid-like missiles found in Antarctica. While it couldn't be replicated in it's entirety, it had been used to greatly improve on current proton torpedo technology. The new proton torpedoes had vastly improved ranges and speed. Their warheads were also several times stronger. The greatest change had been to the energy sheath. Capable of withstanding tremendous damage and burrowing through energy shields and armor by overloading a localized area, it made the proton torpedoes incredibly dangerous.

Borrowing from the expansion pack his people were already working on, he designed an additional unit. The Valkyrie Bomber was based off the Missile Boat, modified to fire volleys of proton torpedoes. The bulkier hull allowed it to carry hundreds of torpedoes.

The marines were designed the same as Warren's Phase II stormtroopers. Although they possessed much heavier armor. Their weapons were a much more robust version of a Verpine Shatter Gun. The Goliath was easily made from an AT-ST by a few cosmetic changes and changing it's weapons. The Vulture was likewise easy to make, combining an automatic grenade mortar with a speeder bike.

For defensive structures they used magnetically sealed armor to form pillbox bunkers. They usually were only used near a stargate. The other structure was a missile launcher tower, which stored hundreds of proton torpedoes.

The Telchine backing the Dominion was instructed to produce limited copies for production of their materials. The leader was a droid programmed with propaganda drawn from throughout history on Earth and the Galactic Empire. It would help disguise the use of Nish'ta on populations. Enhanced nuclear bombs would ensure nothing can be captured.

They were designed to march forward slowly. Conquering a planet and then fortifying it heavily before moving on to the next. They would also actually recruit from local populations and Firebat armor was to be used by them. The Firebats weilded plasma throwers that used the plasma generator from a staff weapon. The weapon would cycle between three firing chambers to throw out gouts of plasma in crudely shaped streams.

Wanting another enemy, but not wanting to use the other two races from the game, he decided to go with a different game. Using the Warhammer 40k game as inspiration he recreated a Mars-class Battlecruiser. He based it upon a Katana-style Dreadnought. The expanded hull went largely towards increasing armor and shields.

The weapons were replaced largely with laser cannon turrets. The exceptions were the three large turrets on top housed twin heavy ion cannons and the front turret contained a planetary turbolaser. Using flawed stygium kyber crystals in the weapons made the bolts appear like prismatic collections of light. The power suffered, but with the ion weapons it didn't matter much. The engines were slightly upgraded to make it a bit faster and the extensive repulsors allowed it to land or hover.

Inside was a large biological factory containing modified Spaari Cloning Tubes designed to create Gargoyles and other creatures. The primary creation though was cultists. Cultists were baseline humans alchemically altered heavily to operate at superhuman levels. Their bodies literally tore itself apart after a day or so under the strain, but they didn't need to last long.

The Cathedral Ship would hover over a settlement and cultists would pour out of the sides. They would then charge in and attempt to gather several captives. In a not to his Christian heritage, he made the number six. They would then sacrifice then using a short ritual chant.

The chant would activate an organic holographic projector. It was single use and killed the cultist incredibly quickly. If the ritual finished though, the ship would beam the remains up and beam down a Gargoyle. It would use a holographic projector to simulate flames while disguising the ring transporter. The remains of the cultists were placed in the nutrient vats to be recycled.

The cultists were flash programmed and were absolutely obsessed with completing the ritual and turning into a gargoyle. They died in much too short a time frame for clone madness to pose a problem. Moreover, their spine possessed a jagged edge to injure any Goa'uld who attempted to possess and heal one. Moreover, since the memories were imprinted, using a sarcophagus erased all of them.

The Gargoyles were beamed down naked. Adding in the capability of creating their armor was not possible without a much larger ship. To compensate somewhat their fore-arms were modified into a shell-like extension resembling their former shields. Their wings were also thickened and armored heavily since they wouldn't be covered in armor.

Xander still saved the original Gargoyle template. He figured that when the people saw his troops with 'tamed' versions of the demons that terrorized them they would be impressed.

Dedicated foamplast plant and tractor beams would allow the Cathedral ship to quickly create fake religious monuments to further propagate the ruse. Any Goa'uld that investigated afterwards would find an unbelievable story. Hellhounds, heavily modified Vornskr, would also be released before they left to make investigating more difficult.

Hellhounds were Vornskr who were modified to detect Naquadah instead of the Force. They also disliked the smell of normal humans and would naturally avoid them. They had their survivability greatly increased as well. Their appearance ended up resembled horned wolves with fur made of quills and glowing eyes. Their hides were heavily energy resistance and due to the quills, ablative as well.

The Telchine supporting them possessed a cloaking field. The ship would tow spoils from their raids back to it periodically. Whenever enough was gathered a new ship could be spawned. A ship also had to have 'created' a hundred gargoyles before it would spawn. Naquadium bombs ensured nothing could be salvaged from their remains. Xander figured he'd eventually add additional creatures designed by Eric.

Xander's original idea was to create vampires to be used as disposable troops, but discovered something interesting. Artificially creating a vampire through injections didn't create a vampire. Instead it created a monster. One eerily reminiscent of the movie Aliens. Testing revealed it was the lack of magic involved. Thinking about it, he decided to he could work with the discovery.

He had a large cargo ship made and equipped it with heavy armor. The armor was made primarily of Naquadah and Trinium to disguise its origin if it did get scanned. The outer layer of the ship was sculpted rock to further disguise it and was magnetically sealed to make it energy resistant.

It was then equipped with a cloaking device. Goa'uld reactionless drive ensured it left no trail. He then build an assembler dedicated towards disposable escape pods disguised as meteors. A Spaari Cloning Tube and some other equipment and the ship was setup to seed Xenomorphs on planets across the galaxy.

He built a dozen of them. They were then programmed to randomly venture out and seed any habitable world they found. If captured or damaged they were designed to completely self-destruct with a Naquadium bomb.

Since they were instructed to only seed from orbit he felt confident any world he controlled would be safe. With adequate planetary defenses the pods could be destroyed or captured long before landing. Grinning at the chaos he was about to unleash on his enemies, he order all of the ships to launch.

Just in case he made sure he had a crystal gravfield trap setup. Capable of using gravity fluctuations, combined with regular sensors it would automatically point out cloaked units. He made sure they all left the system before relaxing. He needed Earth at least for one more year.

He couldn't wait for the reports to start coming in. Ideas for additional groups were already forming in his mind. The galaxy was about to become pure chaos. This was going to be so much fun.


	12. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Xander celebrated the successful release of Starcraft with the launch of his flagship. The Nyx was to first in his new line of dreadnoughts. Twenty two kilometers long and sheathed in stealth armor, it presented a terrifying image. The stealth armor absorbed light completely, making it look like a vast moving shadow.

The only spots of color was the newly chosen blood-red symbol of Xander's Sith Imperium on either side. It was based upon the former symbol of the Jedi order, a pair of curved wings surrounding a star. It was subtly changed, replacing the star with a sword. From his memories from the Sorzen and later on Xendor, who he couldn't resist because of the name, the Jedi were who he wanted to emulate.

The Jedi founded their beliefs, then spend the rest of their existence wiping out every group that didn't agree with them. They didn't always kill them, but other types of pressure and time helped maintain their image of people acting for their good. Although they still slaughtered their fair share.

The entire time they convinced everyone they were only doing so because they cared, even as they dragged them into war after war. For Xander, the Jedi were the greatest evil masterminds in history. He admired them greatly. All the more so since they didn't actually exist to oppose him.

The armor on the Nyx was also incredibly thick and phase-locked. The critical portions of the substructure were also made of phase-locked materials. Between that and planetary shield generators it was incredibly durable. It was capable of ramming and destroying any ship or asteroid he knew of, including the Deathstar. The molecular shielding also caused almost all energy weapons to charge the shields instead of draining them.

Even with the numerous engines of every type scattered throughout the ship it was still fairly slow. Quantum armor and phase-locked materials were very heavy. Fortunately it possessed an amazing hyperdrive, easily rated at 0.5 thanks to the advancements from the other tech bases.

He had gotten his spinal superlaser installed, although with advances and Bevel's aid, it was actually stronger then the full version on the Deathstar. A pair of them had been spinally mounted, one on either side of the bow of the ship. Since they were capable of a full arc of fire, their emitters were angled allowing them a cover an arc of 120 degrees between them.

Lira had outdone herself with the rest of the ship. Scaling up the Eclipse-class Star Destroyer design had allowed room for everything he had asked for and more. The ship now possessed numerous extensive hangers. Combined with the storage racks for the standardized types of ships and it managed to carry over a hundred thousand small craft.

While working of the ship Lira had made a significant contribution to the Uplift Protocols. Miniaturized repair droids, based upon the remains of Vuffi Raa could crawled through the tiny gaps between components and save even more space. They could also be installed even on starfighters.

As per his demands the weapons for the ship were evenly distributed across the top. The number of weapons on the bottom of the ship were fairly low. Instead two rows of planetary grade turbolasers and ion cannons were mounted along the sides like a broadside from a galleon. The turrets allowed them all to fire forwards as well as provide a wide degree of coverage. Handfuls of smaller defensive turrets and tractor beams were scattered across the underside was well.

Due to the advanced in power generation the top of the ship bristled with weapons. Enough heavy turbolaser turrets were placed to more then double the combined total of weapons from the original Executor. Quad turbolasers and heavy ion cannons each equaled that number. With the large number of smaller defensive batteries, it possessed over fifty thousand weapons. Due to the use of stygium crystals all the energy bolts were black with a faint white outline.

Continuing the symmetrical design of the ship two miniaturized Telchines were nestled inside the ship. They were both limited to objects up to a kilometer in size, although they were still capable of making parts that could be combined later.

The ship itself also possessed both a cloaking field and a holo cloak. Combined it was capable of disguising itself as a much smaller ship. Between those features and being built within the asteroid field, he had kept it a secret from Earth.

Unseen, Xander left Earth. Now he just needed to wait. All of his plans for the Starcraft franchise were already in motion. In a year or two, he should have a large enough fan base to power a link to that universe.

* * *

Left behind the Tatooine base sat quietly. Most of the equipment and facilities were shut down and only the defenses were still running at full capacity. Overhead groups of the new Gryphon-class Light Cruisers patrolled the system.

The Gryphon as based upon the Imperial Escort Carrier. It was scaled up to 250 meters long and covered in dark grey plating. It also possessed a row of eight dual long range turbolaser turrets along its spine. The nose contained a heavy ion cannon and each of the four wings housed a dual heavy laser cannon turret on top as well as another underneath. There were also four twin autoblaster turrets on the bottom of the ship, a pair flanking each hanger door.

It's engines, based off the Carrack cruisers, enable it to easily outpace a TIE Fighter or Death Glider and it's extensive maneuvering jets render it quite agile. Each hanger contained room precisely configured storage racks . Between the two hangers they had four Chimera Shuttles, already fully loaded with Spartoi. They also had eight Medusa Gunships and ten squads of Harpy Fighters.

Dozens of Gryphon Cruisers were stationed around Mars to protect the solar system. Two Telchines were busy consuming the asteroid belt as they manufactured hundreds more. Most of them were designated to follow him although the Earth defense fleet would continue to slowly expand.

Also being constructed were two additional Minotaur Cruisers. Both of which were destined to stay near Earth. Warren had sent back the ones he initially sent, wanting to use more traditional Empire ships. The full squad of four would comprise the core of the Earth defense fleet.

* * *

While flying, Xander reviewed the progress of his false empires. They had served remarkably well as distractions and several Goa'uld were panicking in the face of the all the new threats. He hadn't informed SGC about any of them save Warren's and was wondering how they'll react when running into the others. Sadly, it seemed likely that it wouldn't happen for most of them.

Both of the false human empires, starcraft and gundam, were close to falling. It seems the Goa'uld took any threats to their sovereignty seriously and had united in the face of the new threats. After their initial success both groups had ended up fighting fleets of thousands of ha'taks. Although from the reports, the Goa'uld may also have just been interested in acquiring their technologies, the parasitic bastards. He was incredibly thankful for placing self-destructs in everything.

He was sad about the Bartokk Hive Cluster. They had fought ferociously, but they lacked the depth of defense the other two groups had established and were overwhelmed. They had taken a terrible toll on the attacking fleet, but the planet had been devastated in the end. Thankfully it seemed that the alchemical bombs had worked and melted everything. Even better they had taken with them a few ships that were too greedy and were attempting to salvage them.

Eric had truly performed wonders with the Bartokks. He had increased their regeneration until they could regrow limbs within hours instead of days. He had also created secondary brains within each arm. Any limb now detached would potentially regrow into a full Bartokk.

Their carapace was also strengthened until they were immune to normal blasters and staff weapons. Their claws were sharpened and strengthened to be able to cut easily through Jaffa armor. However they were shortened to allow them to wield tools better.

The internal changes were the greatest though. Using the research from the Haxil Beast and the Xenomorphs, he had made their blood incredibly acidic. It was strong enough to dissolve any trace of their corpse after they died as well as eat through metal. Their blood was also used in their unique self-destruct devices.

They were also hermaphroditic and could lay an egg a mere hour after eating a large meal. Their hive him was increased in range, but crippled so that they would only gain limited intelligence. Thanks to his research into Tu'kata, they were automatically subservient towards darksiders. That last could be good or bad. But since they were all currently dead and only he or Eric could make more he supposed it didn't matter.

Warren had done surprisingly well and was quickly expanding. However it seems it was primarily due to his possession of ion cannons and the distraction of the other groups. He had also made a number of interesting requests. He was looking forward to what Warren had planned.

The Xenomorphs were doing well and wreaking havoc on worlds they infested. It seems that the movies were correct and there were now dozens of different variations currently roaming various planets. Even better, it was making Goa'uld nervous. Very few worlds had been completely overrun, but unrest was rising.

The Chaos Cult ships seemed to be doing to best. With their ion cannons few worlds gave them much trouble. Already their numbers had doubled. He definitely needed to flesh out their group more thoroughly. Eric would probably love to help.

The trickery it seems, was confusing the hell out of the Goa'uld. They were running around talking about religious crusades and tests of faith. The best part though, was that some of the slaves had taken to worshiping him as well. He could feel the trickle of belief added to the one he got from the other races he had established populations of.

So far none of them had attempted the summoning ritual yet, but it was only a matter of time. Xander had prepared for the it though. The chant and runes were all the correct ones needed. They currently just weren't backed by any power. But he had recreated the ritual site in his ship and it was kept filled with hundreds of clones around the clock. When someone did try, he could use the ritual to draw up enough power to grant theirs. And then how strong will their belief be?

* * *

Xander took great satisfaction in the success of his spy network. A squad of cloaked Gryphons had been seeding Overwatch Droids modified with a cloaking field onto planets the various empires had reached. He literally had over a hundred secondary bodies making crystals to keep up with the demand.

He had also thoroughly field tested his secondary body Ares by using him to lead raids. The raids had been to wipe out a few Jaffa villages and take captives. He drained the captives and copied them using the Sentinel techniques. However, instead of a few skills, he exposed the originals to Nish'ta and then copied their entire personality to implant. The brainwashing was imprinted as an integral part of there personality and a quick injection and shock made them immune to future exposures to Nish'ta.

He had hundreds of Jaffa currently seeded across Goa'uld space. What he really needed was a Goa'uld to replace. One with a reputation for training Jaffa would be perfect for setting up more spies. And it was already obvious that he needed more information.

The picture he had gathered so far was irritating. There were literally hundreds of sectors of space, each the fiefdom of some group of Goa'uld. It seemed possession of Ha'taks were a status symbol and they all collected them enthusiastically. The result was a potential fleet of close to a million capital ships. There were also sectors of space they wouldn't venture into, since they contained powerful enemies.

He decided that he didn't want to abandon the two faltering human empires. While they weren't important, he had enjoyed making them and invested a lot of time on them. He ordered the Telchines to construct massive amounts of fortifications around their 'home systems'. Hopefully they will bog down enough Goa'uld to let Warren keep his momentum.

He also scattered 'colony fleets' around the edges of their territories to cover his next move. He setup several smaller colonies that would eventually build enormous fortifications to rival those of the 'home systems'. The Goa'uld should end up paranoid and busy hunting for buildups. To really make them paranoid, he arranged to let a spy of theirs find the list of colony fleets. A list that was much larger then the fake fleets and colony worlds he had setup.

The Bartokks he decided to treated like the Xenomorphs. They behaved the same as before, but their base moved now. He had used the very first of his new Worldcraft as the primary hive. He programmed their hive ship to stay within the Goa'uld empire.

* * *

The production of Worldcraft were actually due to the needs of his two newest summoned races. They both revered nature and the Worldcraft and Herdships he was making were designed to satsify them since he currently didn't have actual planets to bestow upon them. Because of their pacifistic nature they were fairly useless as Goa'uld enemies, but perfect to flesh out his future Imperium.

His latest couple of races were the Ho'Din and the Ithorians. Through a lot of work, both had small but growing populations that now worshiped him as the god of nature. This was done partly through mental manipulation and Nish'ta and partly through Pete's latest project.

Pete had created a new race he called a Dryad. The name was incredibly appropriate. He had needed some help finishing it, but he had done the majority of the work. It was based off the work he had done with the Shi'do, Neti and werewolves with bits of other demons thrown in.

The Dryad looked a young woman, apparently because it was traditional, with tanned skin and green hair and eyes. Her base was the Neti, which gave her wooden flesh. As expected from a plant, her blood was a very pale and clear green. Thanks to the Shi'do genetics she had no problems moving around and changing her form.

Through alchemy and other demonic genetics she was fully capable of growing fruit and other vegetables from her own body. She could also grow incredibly large and shrink back, although no smaller then her base form.

Because the Neti used was a Jedi Master, she was force sensitive and designed to focus primarily on a single power. Plant Surge was a rare power that allowed for the control and rapid growth of any plants in range. She could also use it on herself to regenerate as long as her heart was left.

Since shrinking was a very slow process, she was designed to be able to break parts of herself off. If she turned into a tree, she could extrude a normal body and break off from, leaving the tree. Unfortunately she couldn't duplicate herself.

The wood of her flesh was incredibly strong and resistant to damage from everything. She was also incredibly strong. Her warform was even worse and was based off the werewolf curse. The curse was actually a darkside imbued virus. Thanks to that it was alchemically altered to work with the dryad to create her warform.

In warform her wood darkened to purple as did her sap. Her wooden flesh became nearly indestructible and she gained significant amounts of strength. She could combine the two to grow claws that could easily tear through steel. Her Plant Surge was also stronger then before, allowing her to regenerate any damage almost instantaneously.

Making her had been an challenge and at one point he had been force to summon and absorb the Dark Woman, one of very few recorded users of Plant Surge. Fortunately he had already drained Kar Vastor, the only other well known user. He had also been helped by the memories of Ajunta Pall and Sorzyn Syn, who had possessed a slower variation of Plant Surge that could alter the plants in more significant ways. He was still working on mastering all of the other powers they had possessed.

Because of how dangerous she could be he made sure she was loyal. The experiments found when first being grown she could absorb memories and they would shape her mind. He very carefully constructed a caring and thoughtful individual. One who tried to help others and one that was utterly loyal to him. She ended up coming across as a very friendly cultist, almost creepy in her serenity and certainty.

It took hundreds of attempts and he had to kill more then one failed attempt personally before he felt the personality was perfect. He had every other version destroyed and declared the Dryads his Magistrates. After mass production they would serve as an integral part of his judicial system.

Thanks to the bewildering array of senses they could manifest, Dryads could easily tell when people were lying. Although the force enhanced senses also allowed for very limited guidance as well as the ability to sense intent. Although they served as Magistrates, the Ho'Din and Ithorians worshiped them as avatars of nature and Xander.

* * *

Warren stood on the bridge of the Executor and savored the moment. Ever since his mission objectives had been modified he had been happy. There was something incredibly satisfying about arriving at a new world and crushing all resistance.

"Open fire!"

He watched in satisfaction as the pair of Ha'taks were torn apart under the barrage of turbolaser fire. The few shots they made in return were easily stopped the shields. Overhead the captivating sight of swarms of TIE fighters gracefully tearing apart the rest of the Goa'uld fleet played out.

While it was much more effective, Warren was glad Darth Xander had ordered him avoid using them when possible. Warren genuinely disliked using the ion cannons against the Goa'uld. It was so much better to exchange fire with his enemies, giving them a chance however small, before grinding into dust.

He was glad he had almost complete access to the Star Wars database. While he couldn't use the other tech bases, aside from the Goa'uld, or the super weapon projects he actually enjoyed using the equipment he had once fantasized about. Plus there were more than enough options to meet his needs. Two in particular he had made use of extensively.

Ton-Falk Escort Carriers which he had just called Imperial Carriers since it was the only one he was using, were his most common ship They had been modified simply but extensively. He had first traded out the missile launcher for an ion cannon. Then he had applied his modified Uplift Protocols to it before he had almost everything on the inside gutted.

The ship's interior was mostly just filled with automated storage racks for TIE Fighters. Because of them, instead of a hundred, the carrier could carry up to three thousand TIE Fighters. However, it was unable to carry anything else, even other TIE variants.

Xander considered it well worth the trade-off and had a few of them dedicated to both TIE Bombers and Interceptors. He had stationed one in every system he controlled. Each Carrier was guarded in turn by a squad of four Raider-class Corvettes.

The Raider was one of the last inventions of the original Lira Wessex and they were perfect for him. Apart from the Uplift Protocols the ship remained unchanged. Aside from escort duty he had used them for a variety of other roles.

His primary use for them had been to use them as their name suggested. Dozens of squads had used to conducted a series of lightning fast raids to attack other systems. Some he was softening up for later, but others were ones he just hadn't felt like dealing with. Since they were mostly used when he wasn't present, he didn't mind ordering them to use their ion cannons to keep battles quick and efficient.

As his ship slowly entered orbit around yet another planet owned by the Goa'uld named Ares, the last type of ship made it's way to the surface. Victory-class Star Destroyers were designed to land on the surface of a planet and were disgorges legions of soldiers and support craft.

Many had been modified in the same manner as the Ton-Falk Carriers. Even now they were landing and dispensing all four of the legions they were able to transport, instead of the few thousand troops the original had been limited too. Part of the reason he was able to fit so many more legions insdie was that the vehicles, apart from the speeders, had all been replaced by AT-PTs.

Next to it, a variant of the Victory Star Destroyer landed disgorging it's single legion of Scout Troopers. They spread out providing reconnaissance for the stormtroopers. They also provided covering and support fire, their plasma sniper rifles picking off their targets from incredible distances.

Following the old imperial doctrine, he used the Executor's turbolasers to bombard all centers of resistance on the planet below. He sighed in happiness as he flipped between camera feeds, watching his stormtroopers overrun Jaffa positions in waves of bodies. TIE Fighters screamed overhead as they provided air support. It was beautiful.

In the center of the battlefield his general dominated the center of the battlefield. An imperial Sentinel armored to resemble Darth Vader he had to argue for hours to convince Xander to make it for him. It fought below, it's Force powers allowing it to destroy any resistance encountered.

In the few moments he watched, it Force pushed a small building over. The wave of dust briefly obscured it before it came into view, leaping high overhead. As it passed over a group of Jaffa lighting sprayed from one of it's hands, electrocuting them. The other hand threw it's lightsaber at a staff cannon in the distance. He landed in the midst of another group of Jaffa, crushing one on impact. A Force scream crashed into them and threw their bodies in every direction. It caught it's returning lightsaber and leapt away again.

Warren shook his head as he went back to watching the rest of the battle. Even though he had seen it perform similarly every planetary assault, it never failed to amaze him. If he had ever nursed a hope of supplanting Darth Xander, it died anew every time he watched it. The Sentinel was terrifying and he never wanted to find himself facing one.

* * *

Hours later Warren reviewed the performance of his scout troopers in the battle. They were the only part of his forces that weren't automated. Drawn from the native populations on the planets he had conquered, they were part of his efforts at forging a cohesive empire.

The volunteers were trained using a neural device that did several things. First it used a variation of nish'ta to brainwash them. Then it scanned and saved an imprint of their mind. It then used a neural scrambler to wipe their personality and flash imprinted the new one in.

Using a temporary version of a Borg Headband they were quickly trained with their implanted information. The result was a totally loyal soldier who wasn't vulnerable to having the nish'ta removed from them. Even better they were also immune to future uses of it from any enemies.

After serving a relatively short term of ten years they would be returned to the planets they came from. They would be allowed to keep their personal gear and have a sizable retirement payout. Flush with cash, knowledge and with access to advanced technology it was only reasonable that they would end up becoming the leaders of their various tribes.

Once in charge, they would easily reform their people along military lines since that was the only government type they had any experience in. A stratocracy would naturally form, with the civilian world developing to support his military.

To facilitate this, the scout troopers were not designed to be front-line troopers. They were considered both his elite soldiers and support, too precious to throw carelessly into a fight. He needed them to survive their full terms of service after all. He had also equipped them quite well, also in the hopes of ensuring their survival.

Their armor was very different from the traditional scout trooper armor. It was much closer to roman armor in design, consisting of segmented, overlapping plates. The armor was also covered with a mimetic coating to aid in stealth, with the default coloration a light green camouflage pattern.

Offensively they were heavily equipped as opposed the single plasma rifle his stormtroopers carried. The plasma sniper rifle, while not any stronger then the normal plasma rifle, had a much greater range due to the extensive set of focal coils. Because he could, Warren had designed it to resembled the T-21 Light Repeater. They also weilded heavy pistols, which was another major departure from starwars design. They were based upon the disruptor pistol. Because the excitation chamber still had heating issues, he placed several in a rotating compartment. The result was an almost comically oversized revolver.

The scout troopers didn't use any heavy war machines or even the AT-PTs the stormtroopers used. Instead they possessed a much higher percentage of speeders. With the sound dampeners he had installed they were able to arrange ambushes very easily.

His scout trooper program was not the only method Warren was using to control the conquered populations. Imperial propaganda was very polished. It had also been modified to proclaim the worship of Darth Xander, but thanks to the Goa'uld it proved helpful.

Every planet had at least one garrison base established on it. The stargate would always have a Shield Base built in position to guard the gate. In the few instances of a planet having several major cities a standard base would be established nearby each city.

With this planet though he had finally found a stargate hub. The world below was a trade world and actually possessed three stargates. Even better the system had plenty of dead planets and moons. He planned to harvest all of them.

Warren began calculating out how best to establish the facilities to produce an endless stream of stormtrooper legions. Once setup, he planned to assault the worlds of the other Goa'uld through their stargates in a tidal wave of soldiers. All of his war machines would fit through the stargate and would lead the assaults. As soon as possible they would began attacking all the Goa'uld simultaneously.

What made this world perfect was that it was fairly isolated in relation to the rest of his territory. When the Goa'uld finally retaliated, he planned to allow them to fight the small defensive fleet he'll leave behind. Two Carriers and a squad of Raiders would ensure any fleet that defeated them was sufficiently powerful for his trap.

Once enough ships were present an Interdictor field would trap them in the system as a resonance torpedo caused the sun to go supernova, wiping them all out. Hopefully, he'll be able to cripple most of the major system lords in one blow.

* * *

SGC went into alert as the stargate registered an incoming wormhole. The security team rushed into place and everyone armed as the alarms blared. Everyone was surprised when the iris opened and Dr Jackson stumbled through, most of all Dr Jackson himself.

SG-1 rushed down from the briefing room, realizing who the intruder was. He seemed to be in pain as he handed them a memory storage crystal. Everyone was shocked when he collapsed and slowly began dissolving into metal dust.

Wanting answers they checked the crystal and only found a single video, which they immediately played. Harlan's voice began, narrating the footage.

"When he arrived, I regret to say that I hadn't learned my lesson. I thought he was just another visitor."

The view shifted to show a figure they all recognized, Darth Xander entering the facility. No one was too surprised, figuring he was interested in the technology from the reports. The view split at that point, revealing that Harlan had used the scans on Xander.

The scanner results showed a wealth of technology both carried and implanted. Many of the items were unfamiliar and the scanners couldn't immediately identify them as shown by the numerous blanks in the analysis.

"I was greedy and wanted to know about him. So I made a copy to question."

The scene jumped to an odd machine that looked like a silver bath out of which a copy of Xander was clearly forming. It was moved to a room the SG-1 recognized. They watched as Harlan glanced at a screen showing the copied SG-1 chatting with Xander before turning the monitor off and waking the new copy.

"I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't realize what would happen."

They watched in horrified silence as the copy screamed in rage and the air visible rippled from the shock wave. Harlan was thrown across the room. He began running as everything around the copy began dissolving.

The scene jumped again, the time stamp showing Xander starting to scream at the same time as his copy. Almost everyone flinched as they saw half of the copied SG-1 torn apart by the scream.

From their the image split and both Xanders were revealed. They seemed almost animalistic as they rampaged, tearing everything around them apart. As they watched, they made their way towards each other. When they met they fought each other and the scene pulled back to show the confrontation.

Everyone was stunned as they witnessed the powers wielded by Xander. The copy didn't have powers, but was clearly growing. It was also changing, becoming more clearly mechanical as it grew weapons to match the powers of the original.

Even as the fight raged on, the image split again. Harlans face showed pain and resignation as he spoke.

"The facility is too damaged to be repaired at this point. Even as I speak the reactors are becoming unstable. The only survivor, if he can be called that, is the copy of Daniel Jackson. Like me he has been infected by whatever energy was released by the original Xander when he screamed. I'm sending you this message as a warning. I don't know what will happen, but for what it's worth, I'm sorry."

The room was silent for a moment after the video ended. Suddenly it seemed that everyone was attempting to speak at once. Hammond sighed as he brought order to the room. Clearly this was going to be a late night.


	13. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Xander woke up feeling remarkably good considering the headache when he had gone to sleep. The excursion to Altair had been a mess. He wasn't sure how, but the creation of a copy had immediately triggered clone madness in the body he was using. He wasn't sure if he should be grateful for using a clone body. While it had spared him losing his primary, it may not have happened at all with his original.

He also wasn't sure why clone madness had set in so quickly. It normally took years and wasn't nearly so sudden. After a moment he suddenly recalled Thrawns analysis of clone madness.

Thrawn had theorized that the force presence of a perfect copy created an echo that acted as a form of mental stress. The echo would be exponentially stronger because he was force-sensitive. If that was right, his proximity would have made it even worse. Combined with all of his memories and the way he was controlling his clone and it seemed reasonable and something that would affect him even in his primary body.

The madness had almost thrown him out of the body, a distinctively unpleasant sensation. Regaining control had been a constant struggle against the raging madness that was all that was left of the clone's mind. While normally a Goa'uld could easily suppress a host, the force powers were the problem. He had followed the resonance that caused the madness and found machines. Using Mechu-deru he forcefully altered it enough to break the connection. He wasn't really sure what he had altered it into, he had been under enough strain that it was all he could do to trigger the change, let alone guide it.

The sudden lack of resonance was blissful. He expanded his awareness and using a combination of Mechu-deru and Force drain to steal Harlan's memories. He witnessed his last moment, including him sending a message to Earth, before suppressing them for the moment. He hurried to make sure he had taken every piece of information possible before his clone melted down from the overuse of darkside energy.

Sleeping had brought a wealth of information. The sheer number of memories were staggering. Thankfully they carried no hint of Harlan's personality, instead integrating like a documentary he had watched. He quickly dispatched a large fleet to salvage everything. He definitely wanted access to the technology of the gatebuilders. He also didn't want anyone being capable of forcing his clones into psychotic fits.

As he watched the fleets departure he couldn't help but admire his new home. The system consisted of almost half a dozen brown dwarf stars orbiting a single red giant star. He had named it Imperial Center and immediately ordered construction to began. It had taken until now to find a system so perfect for him even with his technology.

The rest of the system was already being cleared. Various ships acting as tugs to feed the Telchines. In anticipation of his arrival he had withdrew most of his Telchines from Earth and sent them here. Their numbers had risen dramatically as they had began removing everything he didn't care for.

The construction of miniature Dyson spheres around each brown dwarf were well underway. With their energy being redirected the remaining planets should fall within the life-bearing zone. The two planets were already undergoing terraforming in anticipation.

The single gas giant that would fall within the life-bearing zone was destined to be the new home for the results of Project Red Sky. The Ugnaughts had allowed to name the planet and had settled on Bespin, although New Gentes had been a serious contender and ended up being the new name for the city. They were already busy constructing three additional floating cities.

The system was part of a cluster and he had sent a single Telchine to each nearby system. They were given a complex set of instructions designed to create an enormous military-industrial complex in each system. Each system was to construct it's own defensive fleet as well as contributing to the home fleet.

He wanted his new home to be impregnable. With that goal in mind he began uploading everything he knew both into the computers and his scientists. It would give them a head start in studying the materials from Altair.

Afterwards he setup another massive summoning ritual. With the current expansion rates Red Sky would take decades if not centuries to began feeding him energy again. He had thought about limiting the expansion rate to ensure he received some energy, but that had issues. The short term benefits severely limited his energy flow in the long term.

Hence why he was planning to summon a large number of other Ugnaught clans. Each clan would add to the trickle of energy and summoning enough would also aid in the long term. However, when he attempted the ritual it only partially worked, summoning a handful of Ugnaughts.

Xander realized the ritual had run out of power. He was just glad he had started using only sacrifices to power. He could have likely died otherwise. He spent the next few days conducting a series of trial summonings and quickly realized the cause. The further from Earth he was, the greater the energy cost to summon.

Upon reflection he should have realized it. Earth was the only planet where actual demons exists, let alone a hellmouth. No where else was there any signs of a dimensional breach. He sighed. At least the ritual still worked.

At least Mars was close enough the energy cost increase was negligible Xander mused as he watched the Tatooine base being powered up. While he was there he checked with Lilah and discovered he had an enormous amount of credit with various demon realms from his arms sales. His weapons high quality and exotic materials had created a very demand and she had taken shameless advantage of that fact.

Since all of the demonic realms worked on barter he perused the various types of magic available to him with his credit. He did request everything available on dimensional folding storage techniques available, but found little else of immediate interest. If his gambit paid off, the Starcraft summonings should be able to provide him with the majority of what was being offered.

* * *

Eric smirked as he looked into the tank holding his newest creation. His eyes gleamed as looked his latest creation. He was determined to impress Darth Xander. His last few projects were mostly judged interesting but hadn't been put into production. His few exceptions had been based off creatures from games and not his own design.

The first creature had been the Hydralisk from Starcraft. He had made it because he found it a fun challenge. It had been entertaining to put together, using hydraulic pressure, electromagnetic fields and the Force to create a living cannon. The metallic bone spikes were almost a foot long and diamond hard. The serrated grooves spin stabilized it in flight as well as shredded their targets. The saliva coating and filling the spikes were insanely corrosive as well, being based off the Xenomorph research.

However, he knew they were only used because the Chaos Ships lacked ranged troops. He had a few ideas for future projects but they all needed a basis to work off of. Developing them on his own would take decades. Towards that end he had gotten some creature designs approved for inclusion into the Starcraft franchise later on. They would be available within a year. It couldn't pass fast enough.

The second was the Lictor from Warhammer 40k. He had based it largely off the remains of a shape-shifting praying mantis whose remains he found in the specimen repository. After being altered heavily it gained the ability to shift itself to disguise itself extremely well by blending into the background. Combined with it's ability to remain perfectly still and seemed to be invisible.

It's body was altered for explosively quick movements. It could leap incredibly far as well as sprint faster then most cars. In addition some of it's attacks ended up too fast to see. The application of Force speed techniques made even it's movement blindingly fast.

He wished he could get sampled from the Tyranids but had been refused. Xander had stated that he would never summon anything from a universe where something existed that could follow him back and pose an existential threat. He understood the reasoning, but was still pissed it cut him off from potential resources.

The hiss as the seals on the pressurized tank engaged focused his thoughts again. He proudly looked at the creature as it was stored in the specimen archives with satisfaction. He felt he finally had created something that surpassed any of his previous achievements.

It was inspired by the Ithorians that had recently been added to the empire and based upon the Sith Battle Dragon. He hadn't even been forced to bother Darth Xander to summon a sample. One of the earlier projects had been the creation of a repository containing genetic samples from a wide selection of creatures and races from the Star Wars universe. The various sithspawn were one of the first things created.

The new creature was called a War Hydra. It was very similar to the hydralisk in it's final shape although it had been based on the battle hydra. The arms had been sacrificed to allow for a cluster of five heads. The legs had been fused with the tail to stabilize it's movements. The wings had been greatly altered and resembled a cross between bellows and gills now.

The creature used it's altered wings to breath, the movements serving to draw in massive amounts of air. Since it couldn't fly the scales were further thickened until they resembled armor plating. The greatest change was to it's voice. Each neck contained a heavily modified version of the Ithorian throat sac along the majority of it's neck shaped by a series of cartilage rings.

The War Hydra was capable of a roar that acted like a sonic cannon with a single head. Enhanced with his research on Howlers and other creatures it was a devastating weapon. The hydra could also harmonize it's roars to amplify it's damage. To coordinate it, a central brain was located within it's chest and a secondary mind present in each head.

It was further modified to use the Force to enhance the roar. On each head was a pair of horns that jutted forward to alongside it's mouth. Based off the Force-amplifying horns of various creatures it was designed solely to augment it's roar. The result was a enormous cone of pure destruction. It was even capable of damaging Naquadah armor at close ranges.

"That is indeed impressive."

"Sir." Darth Xander's voice snapped him out of his admiration.

"Relax, I came to give you to results of the assessment."

If anything, this just further increased his nervousness. Although anticipation had now been added since he didn't look disappointed.

"It was impressive. I've already uploaded it into the Chaos Ship archives. It's classified as Tier 2. Congratulations." As soon as he finished speaking Xander left.

Eric stood there basking in his accomplishment, not even noticing he was now alone. The Gargoyle, Hydralisk and Lictor were all deemed first tier units. Most of his concepts hadn't even rated that much. Second tier meant it was judged to be much more powerful and useful then any of the others. It was currently the only second tier unit. He must have really impressed Xander.

The tiers were primarily for the use of the Chaos Ships. In keeping with the theme Tier 2 units had to be summoned by a pair of cultists working together to create a layered ritual circle with two sets of sacrifices and a longer dual chant.

Eric, now highly motivated, turned back to the archives. As he looked for inspiration he wondered what it would take to create a Tier 3 unit.

* * *

Despite his best efforts Xander was drawn back to Earth when one of his sensors detected a surge of unknown energy in his hometown of Sunnydale. The Watchman droids seemed to be having problems even recording it, sending mostly static back. The droids who attempted to analyze the fragmented information seemed to return gibberish or break down.

And so Darth Xander found himself striding through town following the feel of the unknown energy source. He wasn't too surprised. Magic, like the Force, was something that most technology had trouble in dealing with.

When the trail took him to the highschool he paused for a moment before shaking his head. As he entered, he wonders how he would have been involved if the events of Halloween had never taken place. _I swear if it's a female monster_...

Xander stalked through the school, still following the strange energy. Behind him followed three others. Two were women and obviously bodyguards. They were dressed in armored suits and were heavily armed. In reality they were dryads he had personally altered to serve him. Primarily he had made their flesh much tougher so they could physically shield him easier.

The last person was inspired by the mayor's aide. No one would ever suspect nervous Mr. Finch of being dangerous. In reality it was a Lictor that had been heavily altered. It regained it's shapeshifting and lost almost all of it's stealth abilities. It's speed had been increased even further and all of it's natural weapons replaced. Each scythe arm now weilded a stormblade. The lower arms now ended in a clawed version of the gauntlet the Spartoi wore, complete with integrated weapons.

Since stealth could still be useful, a Stygium cloaking device was implanted in it's back. A shield generator had also been implanted. He modeled and named him Jonathan after a student he knew. Poor guy got picked on by everyone, but was a perfect example of harmless.

Feminine screams caused Xander to pick up his pace. The scene he stumbled upon was an unusual one. The swim coach was standing over an open sewer grate. The screams were coming from there. The coach didn't react to his presence, even when he walked up to the grate and looked in.

Below the school nurse as being torn apart by three fish people. After a moment he ignored them to focus on the coach. Despite being the source of the energy he didn't seem too different from how he remembered him. His face did seem off, much paler then it's usual bright red. Al thought that could just be from the murder he just committed.

As Xander studied him, the coach began speaking. He didn't look at him and his eyes were dull and unfocused, as if he was viewing memories. Behind him, his guards spread out to cover the room and the coach in particular.

"I'm just tired of hiding. I've been hiding my entire life, ever since my grandfather moved us out here almost 60 years ago and changed our name.

"You know, our name used to be Marsh. We were a proud respected family. Pillars of the community. I still remember walking down the street with my family and everyone nodding to us. And then we were running. My grandfather was killed soon after we came her and my father never talked about it."

He looked over at Xander, although his eyes were still glassy. He had yet to blink throughout his story. His mouth was stretched grotesquely into a wide, thin parody of a smile.

"I pieced it together later from news articles. The government had found us. Ever since my father was killed, I've been alone. I thought I had found someone. Ruthie was supposed to be the one. We were making a family."

Xander took an incredulous glance down into the pit where the fish people had began feeding on the nurses corpse.

"She wasn't strong enough. Ended up scared. And then she called our boys monsters. Not our, mine. She didn't want them. Can you believe it? They're not monsters. They're better! They're like me."

Xander immediately focused on the fish people below and realized he could feel the same energy signature as from the coach. It wasn't nearly as strong, but it was still present. Curious, he extended a light force probe towards the coach.

Xander recoiled violently from the contact, the probe shattering immediately. The coach was definitely not human. His thought processes were almost disjointed and had been painful to follow. However, there was something he had recognized in there. Despite being a demon, the hellmouth had imbued him with that spark of mad genius he was looking for. He could be useful.

When his guard grabbed him the coach seemed to snap out of his dazed state. Interestingly his eyes, although clearly focused, still retained their dull watery look. He screamed something about not being taken before pulling away.

Both Xander and his guards were surprised when his skin tore away to reveal another fish person, larger then should be possible. It dived into the water and vanished. He reached out with the Force, but momentarily lost his grip on it.

After a moment Xander got over his shock and looked around the room. He definitely needed to know more now. Anything that could interfere in his connection to the Force was a serious threat.

In the back of the room was an elaborate chemistry set along with a small shelf with only a few books. As expected the scanners worked perfectly fine now. He wasn't surprised to discover many of the chemicals were very similar to those used in sith alchemy.

The books were the unusual part. They all looked to be hand bound in leather. The pages were mostly mouldy pieces of parchment covered in handwritten notes. The titles were interesting as well. The Mysteries Within and the Breath of R'lyeh sounded interesting although his attention was drawn the third book.

The last book was untitled. It's spine also indicated it was the most often used. Inside a few pages here and there stood out, seemingly torn out of other books. It also seemed to be much newer then the other two books. Skimming through it revealed it to be the coaches notes on alchemy as well as his race.

Xander suddenly recognized where he had heard of R'lyeh. If the coach was an actual Deep One then Old Ones might be real as well. And if they actually returned, they could pose a serious threat to some of his plans. He was going to have to deal with the Deep Ones before they awakened Cthulhu.

* * *

Xander sighed when an incoming priority alert triggered. He hesitated a moment before he pulled it up. Seeing the address, he wonders what trouble a stargate team has gotten into this time.

As he reads the report he begins grinning. This was a prime opportunity and he was never more grateful to have upgraded the Watchman droids. It had initially been done at the request of SGC, but it was paying off now.

As per their request, he had removed their suicide charges and programming. To compensate for capture he had then rebuilt it with equivalent Goa'uld tech. In some cases he had to use Imperial tech, but it was specialized enough or low enough level that it wouldn't hurt him if it was copied. The droid brain, the only part he still cared about, still had a suicide charge. Although it was much harder to accidentally set off though.

He left an order for everything in the former coach's lab to be taken back to base as he left. He needed to get back there as soon as possible. Knowing it would take him several hours to get to his new base he sent orders out in anticipation of his arrival.

When he finally arrived, the SG-1 team had all been stunned and brought over to his base. They were all in the medical center where Dr Jackson was being treated for a burn wound. As gently as he could, he probed Dr Jackson's mind and watched his memories in astonishment.

Nothing he had heard of had even hinted at the possibility of traveling to alternative realities. One thing was for certain. He wanted this ability for himself.

He quickly ordered a team to go back and take everything from the room Dr Jackson was in. They were also ordered to set off a small charge to make it look like the mirror had exploded. Meanwhile he began removing all memories past them reading the warning sign.

The team was positioned as if a wave of energy had originated from Dr Jackson's position. Since they had used their weapons before being stunned, he needed to distract them. He ordered every piece of metal removed from their equipment. Combined with the missing droid hopefully it would be enough to confuse the issue.

Xander half-listens to the reports from SGC as they recover their team. Since they don't seem to suspect the truth, he didn't really care what they concluded. In the meantime he sent a fleet to the planet the mirror came from. He wanted the entire planet harvested in case anything else was buried.

Staring at the mirror he decided to use it. Warren's reports had revealed that his strategy was proving very effective and already hundreds of worlds had fallen to him. It had also made him want to move more openly. With how well all of his plans were going and the limited connection to the alternate dimension he could afford a gamble. This new dimension would serve both as his testing ground and a secret storehouse for his most valuable possessions.

Eager to begin, he started sending units through. Best of all, he knew he wouldn't have to contend with an alternative version of himself. With Earth destroyed he was very likely dead and given the alternative SGC hadn't recognized the name Xander it was unlikely he had been in a position to escape.

Spartoi backed by Gargoyles and other creatures quickly secured the area quickly and reported back that it was enclosed and buried. Teams of Architect droids streamed through to begin uncovering the site and building the infrastructure he would need.

Once preliminary fortifications had been completed he brought form his Ares form. It's armor had been rebuilt several times since it's first conception. It's latest version would be fully capable of withstanding a planetary turbolaser blast. It was with every confidence he strode through the mirror.


	14. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

Xander woke up in incredible pain. Getting his bearings, he looked around and stared out of his window in disbelief at the remains of his flagship. He realized he was on New Gentes and was in a backup body. Meditating only allowed him to recall a sensation of immense pain and disorientation before waking up.

The sensor reports were much more informative. Apparently months had passed while he was recovering. The recordings showed him piloting his Ares form to the mirror and touching it before everything exploded. Based on the calculations, the explosion had gutted the entire ship. The armor had contained it, but it was still strong enough to cause a chain reaction of secondary explosions.

The Telchines were already almost through salvaging what was left of the ship, although the initial reports weren't looking good. None of the scans could find his Ares body which should have survived the blast given it's layers of protection. He briefly mourned the loss of his original body which had been in another part of the ship.

 _At least I now know my backup body network works_. Xander was very glad he could still feel his network of backup bodies. One of his worries had been that the he would have been scattered across the entire network and multiple bodies, if not all of them, would have woken up. He had deemed the risk small enough to chance versus the incredible usefulness of his network. He was very glad to see his gamble had paid off. He had no illusions about himself and no wish to attempt to rule a galaxy devastated by a war held between variations of himself.

Irritated he checked over the backlog of reports while he was unconscious. Thankfully it seems that everything was still running smoothly althoug he had several backlogged messages. Going though them only one real item stood out. It seems Earth was attacked by a pair of Ha'taks carrying Apophis. He was glad to note they were destroyed well before Earth could detect them. He would have been furious if they had managed to distract everyone from the release of his Starcraft movie.

The expansion for the game had already been pushed ahead, although it had to have the secret mission altered. Instead of referencing ancient powers Duran ranted about being the true heir to the overmind and the eldest of his children. The game had also contained the first trailer for the movie. The movie had just been released and it was doing very well. It featured Kerrigan's backstory and touched on a number of subjects he intended to expand on in later media.

Lilah had reported that the partnership with Sega had paid off and the Dreamcast had successfully had it's launch date moved forward. It was now going to release in both Japan and the US at the same time. Europe would still be slower, but that didn't really concern him.

Sega had apparently been more then willing to make a few concessions for his investments. Their console would be much more capable and games would use DVD discs. Even though still using standard computer parts, his partnership allowed them to develop a more powerful system. Also, his subsidizing the Dreamcast allowed them to sell the initial run for a fraction of the cost they had intended. Between that and further deals made with the Machida demon he was guarding, he was confident everything would work out.

Several of his games were also scheduled to be released alongside the console with at least one being included for free. A remastered port of the original Starcraft with Brood War was also to be released and thanks to one of his companies was able to play online on the same servers as the computer version. Between them, he hoped to quickly increase the fanbase he needed for an initial summoning. He had also sponsored a few of the tournaments that were springing up.

In the meantime, since all of his more ambitious projects require him to wait for the Starcraft updates he decides to work on a heavy cruiser to round out his naval designs. He decided to base it off the Corellian Corvette because of it's versatile design and because he needed a distraction.

The central section was widened and lengthened proportionately before the entire ship was scaled upwards. The central section then had a thick pair of wings containing engines added to the sides along with a dorsal fin. The engines were then turned sideways and large dorsal and ventral fins, such as used on rebel assault frigates, were added that contained additional engines. The resulting ship was an even five hundred meters long.

The ship, loaded down with engines, was incredibly fast. It easily kept up with almost any starfighter he knew of, including most of his own. It also had the SLAM drive modified for it's use. When it was active, it could sprint forward at double it's already formidable speed.

The ship also only had a few weapons proportionate to it's size unlike every other ship he had designed. Additionally all the weapons had been mounted on turrets. Both of the double turbolasers had been replaced by a long range heavy quad-turbolaster. On either side of the head and on the central dorsal fin were smaller blisters that contained a cluster of heavy laser cannons and medium ion cannons.

The main weapons of the ship were it's eight particle cannons. Combining the various technologies had created a fairly stable energy bolt but was incredibly power intensive and slow firing. However, it had decent range and detonated with a fair-sized explosion when it struck anything. A long range heavy particle cannon had replaced each of the single turbolasers.

Due to the modular nature of the majority of the ship there was only room to squeeze in a single automated hanger that contained a hundred Harpy fighters. There was a normal hanger which held eight Chimeras loaded with Spartoi and had room for a few guest ships.

The ship was modified with Mon Calamari aesthetics. He specifically summoned and Force drained one just for that purpose. He extended the central section even more and pushed the wings forward to add in a much shorter pair of wings that sloped downwards. He also shortened the tail ventral fin and both enlarged and angled the tail dorsal fin. The resulting organic looking ship greatly resembled a sleek hammerhead shark. The last change was to the turrets, which he replaced with weapon blisters.

The price for the ship's speed was it's relatively light armor. Additionally the high energy costs of the weapons and engines meant it lacked formidable shielding as well. Ideally the ship should function solely in a supporting role. Between his other ships and the planetary defenses he intended to install there was little need for the traditional heavy cruiser. Satisfied with the results Xander saved the project as the Cetus-class Heavy Cruiser.

* * *

Warren stood over his tactical map and tried to figure out his next step. His gambit with the hub world was both wildly successful and a horrible failure. The Stargates had been running for months now and he had overrun hundreds of new worlds. However, it seemed the Goa'uld weren't organized enough to have located him and were still scrambling their defenses.

He had been forced to apply shield generators to the AT-PTs in order for them to combat Death Gliders and other entrenched positions, but had to make remarkably few other adaptations. The main change had been to his tactics. The assaults he had lost so far had all been from orbital bombardment. So now an Overwatch droid and a few ion mines were sent through right after the initial blitz.

The few worlds lost since his change in tactics had been on those worlds fortunate enough to have a fleet stationed there and one that was fast enough to react in time. However since those worlds tended to be the most valuable to the Goa'uld he couldn't resist following up. A quick jump and the Executor had taken care of the defensive fleets each time without any problems.

Thankfully Xander had allowed him use of more of his technology and Architect droids were sent to construct the Shield and Garrison bases he needed to firmly establish control of the population. The interdictor field, only used on the Executor, had made sure none of the ships managed to escape him. Although his carriers and swarms of TIE fighters helped.

At this rate he was going to end up conquering the galaxy without ever needing to activate his trap. He also had yet to encounter any alien races and wondered if there were any left other then the ones belonging to Xander.

He had encountered a few of them when invading worlds and he could honestly say they were terrifying. The fake human empires were interesting, but the Bartokk and Xenomorphs were fairly horrifying to face. He had taken enormous losses in each of those instances. The Chaos ships were irritating, but only a nuisance to a defended world since they tended to avoid ion cannons. It was only when facing them in the field that they became terrifying. Sometimes he regretted ever helping Xander recruit Pete and Eric.

Those thoughts helped Warren come to a conclusion. He sent orders out to place the resonance torpedo in storage and to heavily increase the fortifications in the system. He also sent orders for the scout troopers to be deployed. They should be adaptive enough to greatly lower his losses when facing non-Goa'uld forces and facing some of the horrors in the galaxy, even if Xander had created them all, would help cement their loyalty to the empire.

* * *

When the Dreamcast finally launched Xander celebrated with a toast. He had managed to have the launch date moved up again and it released on Halloween. He considered it a wonderful anniversary gift to himself.

The best part was that the games were finally being sold. The first only dealt with the psi-academy. It was a lighter, puzzle oriented game and didn't really provide him any targets for summing. However it tied into the movie. He did have ideas about how to use it later, but he truly cared about the other two games.

The second game, Ghost, was a spy and espionage type game that involved hunting down Duran as he manipulated Terran companies in his experiments. The story revealed Duran possessed his own brood of zerg that all possessed shapeshifting powers and that he was just one of the Overmind's many children. It also involved the use of a new substance Terrazine which was used to alter psychics he experimented on.

The game had rpg elements in that the use of Terrazine allowed certain powers to be increased at the loss of others. The story firmly established the use of the gas to create limited psychics with only a few powers and telepathy was always the first power to be lost.

The game was enormous and incredibly long, spanning several discs despite being on DVDs. It also incorporated reverse engineered protoss tech, allowing for equipment upgrades that could affect your psychic powers. Most of the protoss sections were side quests since they didn't matter to the main story. Additional side quests included technology based on zerg biology, including regenerating metals and burrowing machines. Almost every side quest in the game featured some piece of technology Xander wanted for his Imperium.

Xander definitely wanted to upgrade his forces, but wanted to make sure he was safe from psychics. He particularly was worried about telepathy, which was why the Terrazine limited it automatically. There were also a variety of other drugs in the game all of them with powerful effects. Pete had contributed greatly to that part of the game, naming a number of effects he would like to make but would likely take years of experimentation to create. Like stimpacks, each had certain drawbacks as well for game purposes. Pete was confident he would work around the drawbacks with access to the original drug though.

The third game was the brainchild of Eric. Called Children of the Overmind, it unveiled the story of a number of beings like Duran and Kerrigan. Each was specially created by the overmind and considered themselves as his rightful heir. They each possessed their own specializations, broods and hive worlds. The game was a 4x style game combined with an optional RTS battle system. It focused on the war between each other to succeed the overmind.

Each group had their own tech tree and capturing specimens from other broods could open up new branches. Eric had spent hundreds of hours developing the trees, filling them with an enormous selection of organic abilities he wanted available to him. He had also shamelessly borrowed from every game, movie and book he could find as inspiration, especially the Tyranids. To make sure he could study the individual abilities many of them couldn't stack. Instead the player would have to establish cerebrates to manage the differing strains of zerg under their command.

The last twist was random attacks and sabotage events would trigger based on the presence of a hidden brood. The story would reveal Amon, the oldest of the siblings, was being the attacks along with Duran. The story mission was basically an incredibly long single battle that required you to win against almost a dozen of your siblings in the first part. The second part was against Amon and Duran's brood coming out into the open and having to fight them.

For replayability you were allowed to select any brood to start as each time. There was also a multiplayer and random map scenario generator. As a bonus, Amon's brood could be used if the story was beaten on hard difficulty. Although it couldn't be used in multiplayer.

* * *

Xander managed to wait a week before he impatiently attempted his first summoning. He used the site in Los Angeles and a full thousand sacrifices for a mere half dozen zerg creatures. Each of them were selected from units that were in the game while there wasn't an overmind present. He had no desire to accidentally call an actual Overmind to Earth.

The ritual worked, although the energy required still drained him horribly. From what he felt he realized a single target would have been much easier on him since he was also establishing the initial link. Looking down at the zerg creatures below, he began laughing as he realized he had did it. He had reached across reality and pulled forth something new.

He truly felt like a god in that moment, although his exhaustion kept him from cackling madly. However, he could already feel the worship from his Imperium slowly refilling his energy. He couldn't wait until it became a flood of energy and he didn't have to worry about running out. Then reality would truly bend to his will.

He quickly setup a base on Mercury before he began summoning again. He was going to be much more ambitious now that the bridge had been created and he wanted to take no chanced. The stories mentioned how the Overmind and probably Kerrigan could respawn and regenerate endlessly, so he planned on dropping Mercury into the sun if he had to. Neither of them could teleport to an area without zerg present so it should be safe.

Almost everything was going to be killed soon after being summoned. The few exceptions were to be housed in facilities located on Mercury and would never leave the planet. Eric was already on his way and sent his design for the facility to him.

His summoning of several of the scientists with tech samples went off flawlessly. He was glad that using them in some of the commercials had paid off. He immediately Force drained them before summoning them again. He exposed them to Nish'ta before sending them off to work with the others at Imperial Center.

With the few defensive technologies he wanted out now available to turned back to his ship. Sadly only two technologies really were of use to him currently. The hardened regenerative biosteel was easily able to be applied to trinium and added to all of his designs. The hardening made it even stronger then before and the regenerative properites was much better then his previous self healing metals. An odd impulse cause him to name it Mithril. It was surpassed only by phase-locked materials for armor and overall much more useful. Mithril had replaced Trinium in his Uplift Protocols.

The other technology was the energy matrix. A crude Terran attempt at an energy shield it actually was able to be applied over an energy shield. It provided a fairly stable shell of energy. The shell absorbed the majority of energy from an attack until it exhausted itself. He could find a variety of uses for that ability.

The first was to pair it with his molecular shielding generators. With energy shields that absorbed energy and then fed it into an energy matrix emitter, it would be able to layer additional shields onto itself. The matrix was also weakened, both to make it easier to initially turn on and to stabilize the shield. By allowing half of the energy through, it renewed itself endlessly.

The energy matrix also provided a great improvement to his energy weapons. The energy costs kept it from being used on small arms, but long range versions of his energy weapons would greatly benefit from it, more then doubling their normal range.

After seeing the results from his Cetus Heavy Cruiser he had realized he needed to incorporate particle cannons in several of his ships. The Minotaur only gained fifty particle cannons since it was still primarily a close range ship. The Charybdis had two hundred added. Sadly the Chimera didn't benefit despite it's heavy use of particle cannons since they were made to be short ranged.

His fleet taken care of, Xander began working on his newest version of the Nyx-class Dreadnought. First he now had the entire substructure comprised of phase-locked materials. With the creation of mithril he could forgo making all the bulkheads from that as well. The thicker internal armoring required him to upscale the engines.

On a whim he simulated larger and larger engines. Seeing no reason not too, he kept scaling up the engines until they ended up comprising a fair percentage of the new ship. He even managed to adapt and add in a SLAM system although it would only function for short boosts. Wanting to take advantage of it's speed, he added an armored ridge to aid in ramming attackings.

The final ship ended up stretching out for twenty-six kilometers. He hadn't included any particle cannons since they didn't benefit from the stygium color change. Instead he had replaced all of the various turbolasers with heavy long range turbolaser cannons. The ship's increased size allowed it to keep the same number of weapons.

He also began working on a defensive dreadnought, although it might be better to call it a battle station. It was based off the Deathstar although it lacked the superlaser. He called it the Aegis and it looked like a shield if it was a hundred kilometers wide. The center of the ship was filled with enormous power generators. The ship was shielded heavily enough to fly through the out edges of a star. The quantum armor was almost overkill.

The main focus of the ship was a combination of technologies. The shield projector used by Lando Calrissian was paired with the defensive matrix from Starcraft. The result was the ability to completely protect a number of ships around it from anything less then a sustained barrage from planetary grade weapons. Hundreds of ships could be protected this way.

The ship still carried a vast array of weapons though. Between turbolasers, ion cannons and laser cannons it possessed well over a quarter million weapons. Despite it's arsenal it was much lighter armed comparatively any any other ship he possessed. The vast internal spaces were all dedicated to truly massive hanger bays, allowing the storage of entire fleets, although only ships up to one kilometer could be held within.

To maximize the usefulness of the Aegis-class Dreadnought he created a new ship. The Thunderbolt-class Heavy Cruiser was loosely based off the Cetus. The wings were replaced by an additional pair of fins on the tail making a cross. There were no central fins, instead it was replaced by a rotating sheath of turrets based off the axis turrets used on the Charybdis. The forty heavy long range particle cannons spaced along the sheath allowed it to fire non-stop.

The firepower came at a cost. The ship had very minimal shielding, barely enough to fly without the support from an Aegis. The engines were likewise very underpowered outside of a gravity well, relying heavily on repulsor engines for it's extreme speed, although it lacked the SLAM drive the Cetus had possessed. Likewise, there was barely room for a set of small hangers, which between them carried forty ion and laser mines in their racks.

* * *

Despite the strain Xander obsessively proceeded with his summonings, determined to expand his tech base. Pieces of Protoss and Terran tech are sent over to the rest of his research teams. When talking to them he learns that they were now studying the designs for a Goa'uld cloaking device that SGC had obtained from a Goa'uld assassin.

Checking up on his research teams Xander was dismayed to find that all study on the Deep Ones had stopped. The research teams going insane and killing each other was more worrying. He made a note to include machines completely able to replicate psychic abilities in his next game. He might need them if his own psychics all go insane.

He wasn't too surprised to find the team working with the books had suffered the same fate. He was pleasantly surprised to note that there was a survivor. Cynthia Ashford was a brilliant physicist and engineer and the records show she had locked herself in her room with her project.

The Dimensional Engine was fascinating piece of engineering as it seemed to provide unlimited power. In reality it seemed to draw power through a dimensional rift somehow. Her explanations were very hard to follow as she had suffered a nervous breakdown. He was also leery of draining information that apparently was enough to drive people insane.

He was glad for the Dimensional Engine even if it couldn't match the output of his current heavy Naquadrium generators. The Dimensional Engine was more powerful then the orginal liquid Naquadah generators and interestingly enough didn't seem to require any fuel, essentially providing unlimited power.

For now he gave Cynthia funding and an isolated lab. The people sent to aid her were all backed up in flash memory just in case. He also placed discrete guards and turrets everything to stun anyone who went berserk.

* * *

Afterwards, he put it out of his mind and turned back the reports. He wasn't too sure how to take the evidence of at least two other advanced civilizations. While Rillaan seemed to be an annoying group, easily ignored if not for their technology, the Tok'ra were rather interesting. Rillaan was solved through the use of the recordings and a few summonings. The only thing of interest they possessed was a remote teleportation device along with a few smaller items.

The Tok'ra presented a interesting opportunity. A sophisticated and entrenched network of spies and saboteurs would be fairly helpful. Since Carter had the fortune to be possessed by one and shared it's memories a quick round of summoning and Force drain gave him access to all of their information.

Sadly, that took weeks as he was forced to rest after each Tok'ra absorbed since he was absorbing all of their memories each time. The summonings also drained him despite the sacrifices and he was forced to wait several days between summonings. Still, he obtained a few interesting pieces of new technology to add to his database. He also realized that they were all idealistic idiots. They had plenty of opportunities, but were all unable to make the sacrifices necessary for them to succeed.

In the end Xander decided to do nothing about the Tok'ra. His forces had orders to take Goa'uld prisoners already so if any surrendered they'd survive. Goa'uld were to be sent to him for Force draining so he'll make his decision then. He also realized he had an opportunity and used the Tok'ra memories to summon most of the various current Goa'uld system lords for Force draining.

When he processed their memories, Xander was stunned. Warren had made astounding progress. He had killed hundreds of Goa'uld, some ranking quite high. The two human empires he setup were being blockaded by allied fleets of various Goa'uld and were sadly deemed unimportant from the Goa'uld viewpoint.

It was the other groups that were interesting. The Bartokk group were doing alright, their had survived several ambushed by fleets after lingering too long. Thankfully the heavy armor allowed them to escape each time. The Xenomorphs were viewed as a plague, but a manageable one since an alert fleet could often destroy them at the start. The number of Goa'uld small craft assigned to various worlds had increased to patrol for such an event. The Chaos ships were the ones they viewed in horror. The ships were considered unstoppable without a full fleet and hundreds of worlds had been devastated by them.

Laughing at the situation, Xander altered the orders of the Telchine being used by the Chaos ships. It was now to continuously create ships. He also updated the orders on the Chaos ships. If they were driven off, they were to return to the Telchine until two other ships were crafted before trying again. Hopefully the squads would be able to overwhelm a number of the smaller defensive fleets and present a much greater threat.

He sent orders to Warren to feel free to conquer both the false human empires and incorporate their technologies into his own if he wants. He decided to leave the Bartokks as dead. He can always use them as shock troops later if he needs them. He also left the Xenomorphs alone, although he did increase the number of their asteroid ships to a full hundred after a few reports he had gotten.

It also seems that was yet another thing the movies had gotten at least partially correct. It seems the Yautja did exist and live to hunt. They seemed to be mostly working for a handful of system lords though and weren't independent. The Yautja were also enthusiastically and successfully hunting down the creatures left over from both Xenomorphs and the Chaos ships.

The Goa'uld who controlled the Yautja were gaining in power quickly. Xander decided he couldn't have that. Still now willing to reveal himself, he ordered Warren to make those Goa'uld his highest priority. It would be much easier to wipe out all of the Goa'uld if they weren't organized.


	15. Chapter 14

Chapter 14

As Xander browsed through the latest designs Eric had submitted he was impressed. Surprisingly, the Hydralisk had very little modifications needed. Eric must have done better then he realized. The other units all had minor changes to them as well with the exception of the Lictor. He had managed to create an organic version of the Tollan phase shifting device although it only worked for a few seconds at a time. Combined with the Lictor's speed and stealth however, it proved very useful.

He had already created a slew of new units based of what he had learned from the zerg that he felt would be useful. Out of them Xander only found four interesting. The Lurker was the closest to the original unit. It was presented as an individual unit instead of an evolution and augmented generally in terms of armor. The main difference was it's ability to slowly travel underground and it's enhanced senses. It was also fully capable of deploying it's spikes while unborrowed.

Eric had taken full advantage of the improved dimensional folding techniques, which allowed the spikes to cover a much greater area, doubling the previous fifty foot range. Xander had no problems rating it a Tier 2 creation.

The second creature was the Mutalisk. It was modified with four wings for greater maneuverability and speed in the atmosphere. Without the need to make it space-worthy, more room was available to alter it's weapon. The Glaive Wurms inside were altered significantly. They were enlarged greatly and designed to disintegrate explosively completely on impact, spraying razor sharp shards of carapace in every direction. Combined with their corrosive fluids effectively makes them function as powerful grenades. It easily deserved it's rating of Tier 2 as well.

The third unit looked like a Tyranid Biovore. Xander was amused he had went that route despite lacking any sample Tyranids. Looking closer revealed it was an incredibly heavily modified hydralisk designed to create a mobile cannon. The amazing part was what it shot from the cannon.

The ammo was based around several zerg attacks that had been combined. Acid spores from a devourer, bone spikes from a hydralisk and the glaive wurm from a mutalisk were all meshed together. Sticky mucus had been used to bind them, which allowed it to stick and the acid spores to weaken the target. The bone spike acted as a needle to implant the glaive wurm. The wurm ate it's way into the target, dealing horrific damage. Finally the dying fluids of the wurm reacted with the mucus and acid to explode.

The creature was fairly slow and the size of a van. It also had fairly light armor. However, it's range and accuracy was impressive due to its incredible senses and the notes stressed that it was intended for use against vehicles. He left a note to have it's armor increased substantially, even if it made it even slower. Other then that issue Xander rated it a decent Tier 1 creature.

The last creature Eric had submitted was called the Infestor. It looked like an Overlord that had the majority of it's tendrils replaced with scorpion tails. The notes mention that he had combined parts of the Queen and Defiler before enhancing the results. Paired with a drug cocktail he developed with Pete's aid it culminated into a terrifying ability. The Infestor could do just what it's name stated.

The infestation ability was an individual one and achieved through injecting a living body or one that had been dead no longer then a few minutes. It replicated the effect of the ancient healing device in some ways, patching the body together and granting it an extremely fast healing ability. The body came back much stronger and faster then before, having no natural limiters. The healing kept it functioning and even improving slowly.

It was controlled by an implanted parasite that was similar to a Goa'uld. The parasite operated based largely on the zergling combat instincts, making them incredibly aggressive. However thanks to the parasite the infested avoided attacking any creature emitting the appropriate hormones. If the parasite was killed, the infested died, otherwise they could function up to a week if they were able to obtain enough food to keep up with their ramped up metabolisms.

Because of it's potential Xander sent back a list of changes to be made. It's flight was traded in for a series of long segmented legs capable of supporting a much heavier armored carapace. The organs were still present, but only served to reduce it's weight and travel faster. The entire creature was scaled upwards to the size of a full overlord and clusters of stingers were placed together allowing it to infest several targets simultaneously. Lastly, it gained the ability to spray a paralyzing mucus in a large area to impede targets. The mucus would slow down and entangle units making them easier to infest.

The virus was itself upgraded to grant a light exoskeleton capable of resisting the mucus. A nice twist allowed them to be changed even further. The resulting infested resembled a cross between a human with a zergling, with it specifically gaining the scythe wings and digitigrade legs.

With the stingers capable of stronger injections, they only needed a few seconds to infest a body. The process still took a full minute to convert, but the Infestor only had to make the initial injection. When the changes were fully implemented, the unit would be the first Tier 3 creature as opposed to the weak Tier 1 it would have originally been. The rest of the units were sent back, along with a few notes and ideas for him to consider.

Xander was just about the update the Chaos Cult ship programming when he was struck by a better idea. He checked and since the Bartokks didn't share any unique technology with him apart from the cloning tubes decided to go ahead with his idea. He took every creature except the Infestor, including many he had previously decided to reject, and assigned them all to the Bartokk Hive Ship. Most of them were like the Lurker, basic zerg units with only a few improvements. The Infestor was still assigned to the Chaos Cult ships, requiring three cultists working together to summon.

Using the newly updated Bartokk Hive Ship as a template he queued up several more. They were all assigned to foray into one of the sectors of space that the Goa'uld avoided. A few would continue to harass the Goa'uld. Programmed differences in cosmetics and tactics, specifically army compositions would allow them to mimic Tyranid behavior.

Golvash had no idea what to expect as he was ushered into the amphitheater but he was determined to prove himself worthy. He had been summoned by his parents and the clan elder and informed that he had been selected for a great honor. He had a chance to aid their race as never before.

Wolfram and Hart was a very reputable company and had extended a business proposal. They would trade a select number of weapons in return for ten of their brightest youths. The new weapons they had already been buying were in great demand. The demonstration of the ones they were offering were simply amazing.

The Hunga Munga they presented was a gleaming black and was capable of sheering completely through both kevlar and full plate armor. The weapons were also unbreakable, even against each other. A hundred of these weapons would be traded for each person.

Golvash had volunteered as soon as he realized what they were asking of him. His life was a worthy sacrifice to arm a full century of his races champions. The Czeny family had a proud history of brilliant scientists who had made substantial contributions towards the crusade against humanity. They also had a proud history of risking everything to further their goals, something that had earned them their title of nobility only three generations ago. Now that it was his turn, how could he do any less?

As he looked around the room he saw that there seemed to be dozens of groups of demons. Given their age and numbers he presumed they were all here for the same purpose. He noticed most of them didn't seem as comfortable with their situation as him and his fellow Lubber demons were.

* * *

Golvash knew that many of the other demon races looked down upon the Lubbers as religious crackpots. He had endured the insults stoically throughout university. But here his faith was clearly proven its strength. All of the diviners had agreed that he needed to take the offer and it would help the messiah somehow. With the serenity granted by their faith only his fellow Lubbers seemed to not exibit some degree of anxiety at their situation.

That serenity had stood them in good stead as they had been tested. The tests had been both mental and medical and were equally gruelling. He later was informed that failing any resulted in execution and that some races had lost dozens of canditates before meeting their end of the bargain. He was proud to note none of his fellow candidates had failed.

All thoughts of superiority stilled when a figure strode through the door into the stage. It was tall, dark and menacing. Standing seven feet tall and covered in gleaming black armor to seemed ready to wage war. It's breathing was loud and yet perfectly steady, as if it was calmer then he had been a few moments ago. A large sword hung as his hip only partially hidden by his flowing cape.

Golvash sneered to himself as several of the groups of demons delibrately ignored the figure and continued talking. He was glad he had done so when the figure gestured and the loudest person in the audience rose into the air, desperately clutching his neck. Silence engulfed the room letting everyone heard the dull crack as the demon's neck broke. No one even whispered as the figure began speaking.

"Now that I have your undivided attention. I am Darth Xander. I am starting a research project and you all are going to help me. Each of you will undergo extensive training and will then be assigned your first project."

"Any team that completes the first project will be allowed to experiment however they wish. The more projects your complete the better your life here will be. Anything you can want will be provided in return for one thing. Success. Succeed and you will be granted whatever you desire, whether better quarters, slaves, drugs or even a better trade deal with your people."

"Make no mistake though, if you fail the initial project I will kill your team and gather another group from your race. I paid for each of your groups and I will not be cheated, even if I have to harvest your entire generation to do so."

"After training your will have one year to complete your first project. If you follow the guides waiting outside, they will take you to your new labs."

Golvash was excited, knowing this was why he had been sent. He could already imagine his entire people armed through his efforts. He was so caught up in his daydreams that he almost missed Darth Xander's parting words.

"The technology you will be working with is very advanced. I purchased each of you because humans can't seem to be able to understand it. It is my hope that at least one of you will prove to be worth my investment."

* * *

From the bridge of the Executor Warren raged at the unfairness of the universe. Darth Xander had sent him a positively enormous list of important stargate addresses and he currently wasn't in a position to use any of them.

When he had first been given the go ahead to conquer his 'fellow human empires' he was admittedly very happy. It proved to him that Xander viewed him as successful enough that the other charades were deemed unnecessary. It also showed that he was trusted enough to be able to defend that much more territory.

Conquering the Sphere of United Nations was actually quite entertaining. He was guilty of drawing out several of the battles just to listen to their comm chatter and trade insults with the pilots. Xander had done a superb job recreating their personalities.

In the end though, it had to end and he had gladly taken over their territory. Sadly none of their technology was of any real use to him. The Gundams were interesting, but not any more useful then his AT-PTs given his tactics. They were also much more resource intensive then his current units.

It was when he turned to the Terran Dominion that his current problem came about. The military there was incredibly entrenched and he took enormous losses for every position he conquered. Sure they were cheap and ultimately disposable, but they still took at least a little time to create. His losses had gotten large enough to slow his offensive against the Goa'uld. Worse he had underestimated the technology Xander had assigned them.

When he had gotten frustrated and decided to lead the next assault by moving his flagship into orbit they had unloaded their damnable missiles at him. The insanely effective proton torpedoes had proven fiendishly difficult to defend against and they had shot thousands at him. His shields, which he now regretted keeping at only the original strength for authenticity, had barely slowed them down. At least his armor had proven fairly effective even if it wasn't quantum armor.

A single missile had only been able to create a blast a tiny hole in his hull, a mere pinprick, but thousands had ended up crippling the Executor. The ship had survived, most likely only due to his ground troops streaming in at that moment. He was very greatful to have obtained a second Telchine since otherwise he wouldn't have able to start repairs until his latest construction project was finished.

Warren was fully aware that he was guilty of delaying his current assignment. He had been in the middle of conquering the Sphere of United Nations when he got the message and justifiably finished up his current campaign. However he got greedy and overconfident and launched an assault on the Terran Dominion, which led to his current predicament.

His losses ensured he couldn't assault the worlds of the Goa'uld who controlled the Yautja for some time. However, he had come up with a plan that should both cover that and justify his actions. Thankfully he had enough captured examples to reverse engineer them. He had no intention of waiting until he had defeated the group and gained it's Telchine.

A Carrack Light Cruiser would serve very handily as a basis for an artillery ship. Removing the majority of it's turbolasers and moving the remainder into turrets should leave it able to fend off a Ha'tak. It also allowed him to mount a score of launchers, all mounted into a single broadside. Removing the majority of the layers of internal armor along with removing a need for crew gave it enough room to store thousands of torpedoes.

With his new Artillery Cruiser he intended squads of them to bombard his targets. Enormous surprise volleys of proton torpedoes should be enough to saturate any defenses they could possibly have. Hopefully the Yautja would take large enough losses soon enough to satisfy Darth Xander.

* * *

SGC was getting worried. While the alliance with Darth Xander had proven beneficial they still hadn't gotten the advanced technology they wanted. The brass particularly disliked having to rely on what amounted to a foreign power for the defense of Earth. They had made a number of allies through the Stargate program, but more and more often they were running into problems.

It seems that the more they learned about the galaxy , the more it seemed to be filled with horrors. It seemed like someone had taken creatures from several of Earth's movies and just unleashed them. They were tempted to place the blame on Darth Xander, except they had uncovered legends describing both the Yautja from the Predator movie and the Xenomorphs from the aliens movie. They had lost entire teams to several of the things that hunted in the galaxy, although luckily none of them seemed too organized.

The forces of Chaos seemed like a horrible joke, but one of the teams had managed to get footage of a raid by them. Even in the video there was something wrong about the screaming fanatics that swarmed over the Jaffa forces. The summoning ritual to pull forth terrifying creatures using nothing but words and blood would have been a joke if they hadn't found out about the Initiative run by the NID. Command was still uncertain on how to treat them and for now instructed the teams to avoid them.

Given that many of the crreatures were recognizable, they had requested more information from Darth Xander since it was obvious he had encountered them before. The information had given several people nightmares.

The only group that was organized was the rapidly expanding Galactic Empire. The first few encounteres were entertaining simply to see actual stormtroopers walking around. The iconic walkers were also interesting, even if they were much smaller then in the movies. However, it had quickly become irritating when yet another mission had to be cancelled due to the detection of imperial forces right after activating the Stargate.

Even worse was that more than one team had been rescued by imperial forces and then asked to leave. Embarrassingly, SG-1 had this happen to them no less than three times. Returning later revealed the world to be occupied with imperial forces. They had all become sick of the sight of the inverted shield covering the gate platform that signified imperial occupation.

It seemed that Darth Xander was successfully replacing the Goa'uld. They were a bit worried as to where he was getting the legions of stormtroopers that he had to be deploying across the galaxy. It didn't help that the stormtroopers they encountered acted more like robots then people. If they hadn't seen one bleeding at one point they would have thought they were droids.

It didn't help matters that a few of their previous alliances had fallen through when the world had willingly joined the Galactic Empire. The loss of Cimmeria had been particularly bitter since they had hoped to ally with the Asgard. The guilt from being the reason they needed to be rescued by the empire didn't help matters.

They had tried negotiating several other times, but Earth usually couldn't compete with what the empire was offering. Slowly but surely they were being isolated. They couldn't even point to anything the empire had done wrong but it was still upsetting. Out of everyone Jackson had been the most outraged. He had ranted about how the empire was replacing all of those cultures without any attempts at recording or studying them.

Clemens was particularly worried that Darth Xander's plans. He obviously possessed a significant industrial base seeing as he had stationed a small fleet of new ships to defend Earth. The analysts were torn between whether they should be grateful or outraged that he hadn't bothered to upgrade the equipment of his ground forces. All the equipment the SG teams had observed was notoriously fragile if the movies were accurate. The attitute of not caring for the lives of his soldiers was worrisome in the longterm. However it also gave them hope of eventually progressing far enough to be capable of defending themselves against him if need be.

Xander felt it was time to strengthen his own position and had an idea of how to do so. His constant summonings were taking an unacceptable toll on him. It didn't help matters that he had rushed to summon multiple Asgard in order to Force drain them. He needed a source of energy.

Between the Ugnaughts and Chaos cults springing up on Goa'uld worlds he had gotten an idea on how to create one. He set about summoning dozens of Gamorreans before using Nish'ta and the force to brainwash them. He left them fundamentally intact save for inserting himself into their religion. He placed himself as their god of war, something he was surprised they didn't have a concept of before.

Impatience caused him to alchemically alter the Gamorreans. They would grow much quicker and end up both stronger and healthier then before. They would also be more fertile. He wanted those worlds to be drowning in Gamorreans within a few decades.

He wasted no time in scattering them in little pockets as the seeds of a host of tribes across a few systems in his cluster. Using the Spaari cloning tubes he created several infants for each new tribe. With some minor terraforming, the worlds picked were rendered incredibly hospitable for the Gamorreans, with edible fungus and fruit-bearing trees growing everywhere. He made sure at least some of the fungus could thrive on Gamorrean blood since he anticipated oceans of it spilling.

Xander kept summoning until he almost passed out with exhaustion, seeding hundreds of groups across the selected worlds. Within only a few short years he wanted a powerful source of energy. With a few worldcraft and some more terraforming to stagger their seasons, he could make sure he was fed a steady stream instead of a single annual surge.

He dedicated a Telchine to manufacture primitive weapons and equipment for each tribe via teleportation and only to an appropriately built shrine. He had a lot of fun coming up with the various weapons and armor designs each shrine would produce.

He also placed a few Tier 1 creatures on the planet which would avoid the shrines by the same radius. They would periodically be seeded by the repurposed Chaos ship he stationed in orbit. Any clan that killed a Tier 1 creature would receive an appropriate vibro weapon at their shrine.

The last piece to his charade was to place a number of modified of Sentinels in orbit. They were outfitted like his former Ares body and were to tasked to avenge any properly dedicated shrine by killing everyone within a mile. Between the shrines and their own oral traditions, he should have a firm place in their beliefs.


	16. Chapter 15

Chapter 15

Between Cimmeria and the video footage from the Bartokk Hive Ships Xander had been able to summon Asgard. Force draining each one had been a monumental task as every one of them had been ancient and in possession of incredible knowledge. When Xander finally finished absorbing all of the Asgard knowledge he set about revolutionizing the majority of his tech base.

Their beaming technology alone required him to significantly alter the Telchines to take advantage of their construction speed. Their hyperdrives were also incredibly impressive, allowing them to travel to other galaxies unlike every other system he had. Their technology even enabled him to improve the Spaari Cloning Tubes, upgrading their speed from days to minutes.

The numerous upgrades were further enhanced by the Asgard memories of other races. Summonings of the other three members of their 'Alliance of the Four Great Races' contributed immensely to the database and his scientists were franticly studying everything he had added to the archives.

For Xander the largest boon brought about from this knowledge was that there was unlikely to be any significant threat remaining in this galaxy. However significant threats did exist in at least three other galaxies. With this reassurance he decided to finally conquer Earth.

Over the months that his summonings had taken place he had been forced to venture back to Earth to save it twice due to the Stargate program. He would have been much more upset if he hadn't benefited each time.

The first time was in response to an alien creature that absorbed all forms of energy in order to grow and didn't seem to have any limitation on how much energy it could absorb. The use of his favorite power had been enough to quickly subdue it as well as allow him to discover it's weakness. He had kept the lifeform for study.

It's ability to convert energy into matter was fascinating not to mention it's metallic flesh which seemed to be tin based instead of carbon. His researchers were still studying the process for how it converted energy into metal and he was curious to see what they would come up with. In the meantime he had kludged together a vaguely necromantic machine using cloned corpses to create mass.

He named the machine a Metal Extractor as a tribute to one of the many games he had once desperately wanted to play. It was horribly energy intensive and currently unneeded, so was saved in the archive. Hopefully an improved version could later be incorporated it into the designs of the Telchines.

The second was a parasite that possessed the ability to convert biological matter through an infection into more of itself. It reminded him of the Orcs from Warhammer and he had left the specimens with Eric for study. Eric had already been cackling madly as he left the room.

Enough time had progressed that he had finally been able to summon characters and creatures from his latest batch of games, something that also had Eric cackling madly in joy. With the summonings out of the way, he no longer needed to maintain good relations with anyone on Earth.

He would have left the planet behind, but the source of energy his summonings were running off of was still located there and he wanted to find it. Even as he wondered what it would look like his fleets were mobilizing.

Xander's flagship Nyx, which would probably have to be rebuilt yet again due to all of the new technologies, led the way. It was followed by an Aegis-class Dreadnought. In their wake, dozens of other cruisers along with several Telchines followed.

When he entered the system Earth was burning. The fake Ha'taks had been instructed to target the SGC and any US installation that might contain knowledge of Darth Xander. Regretfully that required the destruction of dozens of cities and even more military bases. Afterwards they had been tasked to destroy the leadership of every major country on Earth. In addition, a fake Osiris had broadcast standard Goa'uld propaganda while bombarding the planet.

Interestingly, from the reports his infiltrator droids were feeding him it seemed that a large number of political and industrial leaders had started running almost a full day before 'Osiris' had arrived. In the end that hadn't saved them, but as a result the destruction was a lot more widespread.

He was glad to note that included Industrial Light and Magic, Lucusfilm and everywhere else that was associated with the new Star Wars movie. Hopefully with the inclusion of the Skywalker Ranch there were no longer any copies left. He should probably distribute the holotapes on his history to the public just in case.

He was glad to note his lawyer had survived even if his bodyguard had been forced to kidnap her. It was interesting that every office of Wolfram & Hart had ended up being targeted for sheltering various people.

As Xander's forces entered orbit he began broadcasting. Footage of him destroying the 'invaders' was shown on every television station and computer. His forces spread across the planet to secure the peace and enable him to take control as quickly as possible.

Even as his forces spread across the Earth he wondered in he should have devastated the nations more thoroughly. Bombing them later on would cause unrest in other areas unless handled very carefully. He decided to think about it later as reports came in from his salvage teams.

The one that went to Colorado reported no survivors and the retrieval of the Stargate. They had also secured Area 51, which seemed to be filled more with cultural items then actual technology. What devices they had sadly weren't of any interest.

The team sent to Glastonbury Tor had a much easier time as that was one of the placed targeted by the fake Osiris. The team located an enormous vault underneath the Tor with a holographic guardian. Zinnia had gone down to work on bypassing the defenses.

She had really blossomed under Willow's care. They had struck up a very strong friendship although she had long since surpassed Willow in technical expertise. She was the only scientist that Xander hadn't had to implant any knowledge, learning on her own at a phenomenal pace. Despite the fact that she now headed a research division of her own, she still dropped by to help the other teams whenever they had problems. She was quickly proving herself indispensable.

The only teams Zinnia was forbidden to interact with were the demonic research teams. He was not about to risk her sanity for a technology that while useful, would not provide him a significant benefit. The demons were handling the information better then the humans though.

About half of them had managed to construct the Dimensional Engine already and the remainder were making decent progress. Sadly about a tenth of the teams had gone insane and had to be put down. Those races had proven useless for the project as several successive teams had also failed spectacularly.

* * *

Warren missed watching his legions of imperial troopers overrun planets although he would admit it current circumstances did make up for it. Shifting to a primarily space-based campaign to assault the entrenched Goa'uld was thankfully still fun. Having the Goa'uld began securing their stargates had been a terrible setback.

Even as he watched swarms of TIE fighters, bombers and interceptors devastated the planetary defenses. The wreckage of a few dozen ha'taks already being towed away to be salvaged. It had been an entertaining battle even if he had to restrict his ship to only laser cannons to give the enemy time to fight back.

When he had arrived, only half the ships had been fully functional. The others were all heavily damaged from the suicidal assault of a number of Chaos Cult ships. Rather then ordering them to self destruct, Xander had ordered them to recklessly attack until destroyed.

Warren was glad when he had been told about that. The Chaos ships had been pretty much the only thing that posed a threat to his worlds given their orbital defenses. He was particularly glad to be given the Telchine that had previously been making the Chaos ships. He had also been given the Bartokk Telchine although from what he had learned the Bartokk hive ships had all been destroyed by various groups, primarily the Asgard.

With his new Telchines, Warren had heavily upgraded his flagship while it was being repaired. He had also queued up hundreds of Artillery Cruisers and created dedicated a few space factories just to resupply them.

The Artillery Cruisers were sent out in groups along with an Imperial Carrier to assault lone systems across the galaxy. Volleys of proton torpedoes followed hundreds of TIE fighters were enough to wipe out most planetary fleets. He had over a dozen death squads flying around and wiping out defense fleets before retreating.

In response the Goa'uld had taken to reinforcing key worlds with much larger fleets along with planetary defenses. Whenever he got a report of such a world, Warren would promptly take the Executor to wipe them out. It seemed that they still hadn't managed to fully recover from the Chaos ships despite all of them having been destroyed over a month ago.

Below, Victory Star destroyers primarily landed scout troopers. They were there mostly to secure and hold the areas since the Jaffa were being heavily bombed. While he still used the AT-PTs, his stormtroopers were mostly used to stand guard nowadays.

Behind him his support craft slowly started to make their way into the system. They primarily consisted of a large number of bulky space stations. He had quickly realized that he needed to replenished his starfighters after every battle, but still didn't want to quit using them.

The X8 Space Station was his answer. Based on the X7 station, but redesigned to only produce TIE fighters and a few variants, it had a much higher production rate. It had also been altered to be mobile, able to follow him on his campaign.

A sudden hail drew Warren out of his thoughts. Accepting the call revealed an human with skin that looked waxy and pale like a corpse. He had the glowy eyes and reverb that indicated a Goa'uld.

"I am Sokar. I am here to cleanse your presence from my realm. Let all witness my might and know they are damned should they oppose me."

Even as he spoke thousands of ha'taks jumped into the system. From them clouds of Death Gliders streamed forth. They bypassed his support craft and headed towards the planet and him. The sensors on the stations reported a large second wave of Al'kesh bombers following the Death Gliders. The feed cut off as they were overrun in a enormous wave of metal and plasma.

Warren felt alive as his ordered his fleet into position. His gamble had finally worked. He didn't know who Sokar was, but he had never seen a fleet that large before. The sensors estimated the Ha'taks numbered over five thousand, although the enormous number of small craft were interfering with their readings.

He smirked as he ordered all of the ship weapons powered up. He could literally feel the hum as thousands of weapons charged up. He also ordered his shields and engines to full power for the first time. It had been entertaining at first to restrict himself, but his ship's slow speed had quickly gotten annoying.

His remaining TIE fighters screamed past him as they rushed forward to meet the Death Gliders. They were vastly outnumbered but still managed to slow them down as an enormous dogfight erupted. It didn't help that he had taken enormous losses from the earlier battle. As it was, they were fighting over ten times their number. The Warminds were very skilled, but they were being overwhelmed.

Warren had his sensor's lock onto Sokar's flagship, a ha'tak over twice the size of any of the others. He laughed as he ordered his ship to charge through the fighters. Behind him a small shuttle cloaked and began setting up his trap.

Luckily most of the fighters avoided running into his ship although they did fire at him. He had his defensive batteries ignore them in favor of the incoming bombers. Laser cannons and underpowered turbolasers lit up the space around him dazzling display as they attempted to destroy the Al'kesh.

Thousands of Al'kesh were shot down, but there were over half a million of them and they were all heading for him. As they flew by him they dropped plasma charges. The Executor shook as it was blanketed in a cloud of small explosions.

Inside Warren gritted his teeth as damage alarms began sounding _This was just like fighting the Terran Dominion and their torpedoes!_ He lost sight of the flagship as his sensors were overwhelmed but ordered his ship to continue flying forward. He continued to stubbornly fight defensively against the bombers even as they ground down his shields.

His irritation vanished when his sensor's finally located Sokar again. They only found him because he was leading the fleet of Ha'taks that were moving in on him. The sensors also reported that his TIE fighters had all been destroyed. Behind him his few Victory Star Destroyers were being torn apart by the Death Gliders and Al'kesh.

He laughed as he ordered all of his weapons to fire at full power for the first time. Each of his batteries had taken the time to lock onto a different ship and his opening volley destroyed hundreds of Ha'taks. Thousands more were damaged and were destroyed in successive volleys. Sokar's flagship was struck by several batteries and vanished in a satisfying large explosion.

Within the first minute he had managed to destroy over half the fleet although he had taken an enormous amount of damage from their return fire. The Ha'taks were swarming around him now desperate to bring him down. They had initially attempted to flee, but the interdictor field on his shuttle had stopped that plan.

The Goa'uld small craft had finished off everything else he had and only the Executor was left. Warren was disappointed that he wouldn't be able to destroy everything by himself, but had planned for this. He stepped through a stargate on his ship after sending the order to deploy the resonance torpedoes.

Back on his hub world, _which I still needed a name for_ , Warren watched the remainder of the battle through sensor feeds. He sighed as his ship was slowly torn apart by the enormous number of bombers. His ship's feed cut and he switched over to his cloaked shuttle.

Now that they had won the Goa'uld seemed intent on salvaging his technology and were all racing deeper into the system. He raised a toast as the sun went supernova and his feed was finally cut. It had been expensive, but he had finally gotten to use his trap.

Despite the loss of his flagship Warren was satisfied at how things had turned out. He walked over to the window where he could see his new flagship rapidly being constructed by all five of his Telchines. Within a month or two he would be in an even better position than before.

After losing like that, he wanted to make sure his new flagship couldn't be destroyed by swarms of smaller ships so had upgraded the armor with quantum plating. Planetary shield generators would also protect his ship. Sadly, his ship would be slower due to all of that weight, but he considered it well worth it.

To prevent the ship from being overrun by bombers he had replaced most of the light turbolasers with batteries of autoblasters. The new Executor would be unstoppable.

* * *

Eric missed the days when all he had to worry about was making sure the latest monster was viable. Ever since he had been informed by Xander that there was little need for monsters anymore life had gone downhill. He should have never agreed to transfer to the newly established PsiCorp.

Headed by Zinnia, PsiCorp was a research division designed to develop psionic use for the Imperium's military. It was primarily based upon the psionic materials and data summoned from the Starcraft game and most of the work was being conducted in that direction. A small part of it was also devoted to the study of Zinnia herself as she exhibited her own psionic powers, but that was the director's pet project.

A large number of the upper level staff were summoned by Xander from the Starcraft universe. While they had been exposed to Nish'ta just in case, their original attitude indicated that they wouldn't have cared who they work for anyway. They seemed more loyal to their position and research then anything.

At first it hadn't been so bad. Studying the protoss anatomy had been completely fascinating. But he was ambitious and had wanted to be the one of the people who decided what got worked on and studied. He had been promoted almost as soon as he requested it and that's where things went wrong.

Eric was placed in charge of studying the biological processes that psionics was based off of. Given his history it seemed like the natural place for him. Like alchemy it seemed to be as much art as science. Sadly there wasn't any kind of collective information he could draw from and he was frustrated with his slow progress.

He was given a full team of researchers that ran all of the tests that he needed done. He liked having minions, but had never realized how much paperwork was involved. Reports and proposals and inventory requests, it was enough to drive him mad.

Thankfully he had submitted a series of suggestions to Xander to be included in the next round of mainstream media he put out. He really didn't like being forced to work blindly. He much preferred to have all of the initial research over and done with so he would be free to work on designing new units.

Unfortunately the take over of Earth had caused enough unrest that it may take some time. He had proposed new movies or shows would help distract the populace, but hadn't gotten any confirmation so far. So for now, he was stuck behind a desk, steadily developing carpal tunnel syndrome from all of his paperwork.

A stray thought had him clearing his desk to make room for him to start sketching out a new creation. He had problems dealing with the paperwork, but that was only because of his slow reading speed. Even signing his name took time and effort. If he build himself an appropriate number of grafts he should be able to take care of everything in no time at all!

The best part was that everything he need tested was already done with the Bartokk research. A few extra limbs added here and brain there and he could hive mind himself fairly easily. Humming happily Eric spent the rest of the night planning his new office accessories.


	17. Chapter 16

Chapter 16

The conquest of Earth was progressing surprisingly well. A few places had presented problems and as planned Xenomorph hives had been secretly released in those areas. To keep it looking random they were also released in other areas and staged heroic actions on the part of 'random' patrols had destroyed them. The trouble spots blamed him for everything until the demonic invasion.

Wolfram & Hart had not taken the loss of all of their offices lightly. Within the first week of his rule portals had opened up across Earth and armies of demons had poured out. Ironically the incursions did more to solidify his reign then anything else. United under a common threat, the people threw their support behind him.

Darth Xander began ruthlessly securing his reign after declaring martial law. With his technology the demonic armies could be easily driven off. Instead he fought holding actions to give the public time to truly feel endangered. Behind the scenes he began consolidating control over everything.

Thankfully he was now powerful enough that reality warping spells had minimal effect on him. He had noticed a number of them being cast, but none of them had been able to significantly effect him. The first few efforts to try had granted him a nice collection of artifacts and specimens as he retaliated with massive assaults.

With the war the existence of magic quickly became made public. Since it was accepted that he possessed the Force as well interest grew and schools were quickly started for their study. He ensured that he received a copy of everything, destroying and looting the places that didn't cooperate. He wanted the best possible start for his Arcane Collegium.

The magical counterpart to PsiCorp, the Arcane Collegium would be the division in charge of magical research in the Imperium. Since the source of magic was located somewhere on Earth, that was where it would have to be located. He was still determined to eventually locate to source of magic, but other needs took precedence.

He intended the Collegium to be a networked set of sites distributed across Earth's solar system. Each site was to be dedicated to the study of a different field of magic. Since it seemed as much mystical as scientific, he had moved the Dimensional Engine project into one such location.

Despite the dangers the site he chose was located on what used to be Sunnydale. He was betting on the energies of the Hellmouth providing it's touch of mad inspiration to advance the project along. He made sure the teams were well separated and their individual labs well defended.

He had offered Eric the chance to head the Alchemy division since he hadn't seemed satisfied with his current position, but was surprisingly turned down. Eric stated that he hated teaching and now that he was finally making progress he didn't want to abandon his current research. Eric did agree to help out with the Alchemy division provided the media projects get started for him. He would transfer back after the Alchemy division was secure and he could take advantage of the centuries worth of research data being summoned.

Overall reconstruction efforts were going very well. There was some grumbling, but the older cities were gradually being abandoned for the new modern ones he was building from the ground up. The new cities were also heavily defended and contained discrete but thorough surveillance networks. Their relative safety was the biggest reason he didn't have more problems.

To ensure their security he cracked down hard on anyone who caused problems. The people were all too willing to trade a little freedom for some measure of peace and safety and he had used this to ensure an environment that would in time create a loyal population. Besides, between the Goa'uld and the demons the populace needed reassurance. Existential threats had radically changed their priorities.

 **X - X - X - X - X - X - X - X - X**

Over the next several months things fell into a lull as it seemed the entire galaxy held it's breath. It wasn't peace, rather it was the calm before the storm as everyone frantically prepared for the next act.

For Xander Earth continued to take up the majority of his energy. There were still billions of people present and integrating them all was exhausting. More then once he was tempted to trim their numbers down, but he wasn't willing to throw away so potentially a valuable resource.

Lilah had helped immensely with his efforts. She had brought to his attention the fact that with his new technology the economy would collapse. To prevent it she proposed exponentially expanding the military. The people were angry and wanted to lash out. By allowing them to fight back against the demons they gained a target that would help to unite them behind him.

Xander approved all of her ideas. Lilah was proving to be a great asset and investment. While he couldn't touch the contract that bound her after death yet, he could indefinitely extend her lifespan. She had been more then willing to accept his offer.

Thankfully enough of his brainwashed industry leaders had survived to ensure a fair amount of control over the economy. With them publicly backing him he had started transitioning the society into a stratocracy.

Recruitment had progressed remarkably well. In some parts of the world over half the population was now enrolled in his military and undergoing training. He had no need for cannon fodder, so they were all placed within various training programs designed to turn out soldiers to help him integrate conquered territory.

He envisioned them as very aggressive support staff. The plan was to use them to quickly absorb conquered territory for his empire's use. Combined with a subtler form of Nish'ta and other techniques he was turning out a fairly loyal personnel.

Anyone who failed the entry-level training was sacrificed. There were a number of other ways to fail, including causing too much trouble. Since he had decided to alter criminal punishments to mandatory military service he was confident the ones who refused to change would die out. Combined with the forcible drafts he was planning on instituting in the more troubled areas he was confident the people would learn who was in charge.

There were more then enough people and Xander was determined to gain some benefit from each and every one of them. Eventually, he planned to draft everyone and make a military service tour compulsory. That would likely take a generation or two however.

To aid in securing his rule he had finally begun production of his Inquisitors. The Dashade were soon to be found everywhere and presented an open threat to his potential enemies. Dryads and a few other races were his velvet glove and their aid helped to keep the humans from becoming too xenophobic.

On the civilian side Xander once again began dabbling in the entertainment industry. To fulfill his promise to Eric it was largely focused on the protoss. There were a few shows and even a movie quickly made, but that was all leadup to the next game. The Aeon of Strife was the protoss version of Children of the Overmind.

The game was centered on the millennium long civil war the protoss underwent. Each tribe possessed their own set of technology and powers. The powers were pushed until they resembled magic more then actual psionics. Every idea the research teams had come up with and every question they had listed would be answered by the game or it's related media. Thankfully the Machida demon that the previous deals had been made with was still safe.

 **X - X - X - X - X - X - X - X - X**

Interestingly it seemed that Warren had the most happening despite being forced to wait for his new flagship to be completed. This was entirely through his own stargate program. His teams had continued to use the stargates from his hub world, which he had ended up naming Imperial Center.

Since the Goa'uld had blocked or fortified their stargates, he had exploration teams using them to explore new worlds. Despite encountering several new races, he had yet to encounter ones advanced enough to contribute to his tech base. Most had proved to be hostile and he had wasted no time in conquering them. While they had all had been fairly primitive species, some of them had still been interesting enough from a biological viewpoint.

Most of the races have standard physiologies with a few minor quirks. Only a few had stood out as interesting. The majority of those, such as the Reol and Ohnes, had been psychic in some way and samples and specimens from them had been sent to PsiCorp.

The most interesting of those psychic races had been just called Spirits. They had a variety of power, including shapeshifting and teleportation. After they had proven hostile conquering their planet had turned into a horrific guerrilla war. In the end Warren had just glassed the planet after ensuring he had secured enough samples.

The Reetou had been the only one to prove truly dangerous. They were an insectile species that were phase-shifted, only partially existing in this dimension. They naturally possessed the effects of the Tollan phase shifting device. They acted as saboteurs and assassins and were incredibly dangerous. In the end Warren had been forced to send for teams of Sentinels to clear them out. The bodies, living and dead, had all been sent to the alchemical research division.

In the end, the only advanced aliens encountered had come by surprise. The Asgard had been monitoring his war and sent an envoy. However, Darth Xander had already left him instructions on them. Warren had promptly called Xander, who had them sent over to Earth for negotiations.

 **X - X - X - X - X - X - X - X - X**

Watching the Asgard leader Thor flying away Darth Xander thought about his meeting. As all the Asgard, Thor was very blunt and straightforward. Since he had already summoned and drained Asgard before he knew exactly how to deal with him.

It took less then an hour to set up a treaty acknowledging the planets they protect along with a trade agreement. While they didn't really possess anything he actually needed, he still needed them to hold off the replicators. Better yet, he can have them test out various weapons without any risk to his own forces.

Xander's own tests against summoned replicators had revealed several weaknesses that could potentially be exploitable. Between a possible offer of Mohra blood to cure their genetic damage and weapons to stop their greatest enemy he was confident he could lure them into his empire.

While he had access to all of their technology, the Asgard were an entire race comprised of brilliant scientists. His empire would definitely benefit from their inclusion. Hopefully by then there would no longer be a reason for them to visit Earth. Hiding several of the projects that they might object too took a lot of work.

In particular PsiCorp would probably present their largest hangup. From research Zinnia had figured out how portals required psychic hotspots. The hotspots were really just pools of energy that had natural gathered. Artificial pools should still work. Asking Lilah had revealed the demons generated them through mass torture and sacrifice.

Using the warmind tech Zinnia had cloned several powerful psychics and turned them into psychic energy generators. They burned out quickly, but were easily replaceable. Within a month the first Hellgate had been constructed. It took her less then a week after that to figure out how to aim them given all the data from the portals the demons themselves were using.

 **X - X - X - X - X - X - X - X - X**

With the portals finally ready Darth Xander gave to word for his counter invasion to begin. All across the planet enormous structures focused the psychic energies of thousands of minds to open portals. Standing next to Zinnia they watched with pride the first large scale deployment of Hellgates.

She had already had a test run, ripping open a portal to a small factory dimension where the demons created weapons for other realms. Seeing as they used slave labor, Xander had taken great pleasure in clearing out that dimension. Since it had a faster time stream, he eventually planned to move part of the research division within the demiplane. The rescued slaves provided some great propaganda as well.

On the other side of him, Eric watched as hordes of sithspawn streamed through the Hellgates. The vast majority of the creatures were of his own design, only a handful of new designs having been approved since then. Sadly most of the ones approved were largely based off traditional armed vehicle designs, such as flame tanks although they made small alterations like using acid instead.

The most prevalent of the new creatures was called a Spore Tank. It resembled a scorpion with each of it's weapons heavily modified. The tail contained a variation of the mutalisk grenade launcher and each claw contained a spine launcher.

Weaving between all of the large armored creatures were plenty of Gargoyles, Lictors and other creatures. Sadly, seeing as the demon biology wasn't compatible with the zerg virus, no Infestors were being used.

Seeing the horde of sithspawn below Xander wondered if he would even need to send in his Spartoi. He was taking no chances though, so only an hour later the portals opened again to let through thousands of Spartoi supported by Scylla Interceptors and Chimera shuttles.

Below, the people cheered wildly as 'their' monsters struck back at the hated demons. When the Spartoi deployed a number of marines and other human special forces deployed alongside them. Eventually the bulk of the human military would come through to secure the dimension, but was was after the initial battles were over.

 **X - X - X - X - X - X - X - X - X**

Silas, High Priest of the Council of Trombil looked out at the destruction of everything he had worked for and wondered how it went wrong. For countless centuries the council had worked under the guidance of the Wolf, the Ram and the Hart to shape Pylea. And now, unless they received substantial aid, they would lose it all.

When their benefactors had called them to arms he and the rest of the council had been quick to answer. They had mobilized the warriors of Pylea, promising glory, slaves and loot for all who took part. The crusade had united the entire realm as never before.

At first it worked well, the warriors were overjoyed to only be facing cows in battle and no true warriors. Then the monsters from the sky had arrived. Skeletal knights clad in impervious armor and wielding sorcerous weapons had had first stalled then pushed back their forces. Though few in number, they reaped a terrible toll when they did appear.

Afterwards the cows had dared to fight back. They used metal wagons and thunderous weapons to defend themselves. The skies seemed to bleed as red energy poured from the sky wherever they seemed to be winning. And now Pylea was facing invasion.

When the portals had first opened up, they had cheered, believing new allies were arriving to aid them. They had soon learned better. Nightmares of flesh had poured forth to slaughter everything in their path. They might have though themselves betrayed, but for the reports of a few courageous survivors. They had spotted the skeleton knights following the creatures.

Many of the beasts were twisted versions of the dangerous creatures found on his world. enormous winged drokken smashed through the lines as some kind of mofgan beast with its mandible extended into enormous scything blades kept them from regrouping. elsewhere some kind of flame beast, hunched over under all of it's armor set the scattered soldiers on fire.

Even bur beasts had been present. Thankfully the thin stretched out version of them only seemed to desire killing. They could be seen fading in and out of sight as they grasped people only to tear pieces off instead of forcibly mating with them. Many warriors still panicked when they spotted one.

Even worse were the creatures that didn't resemble anything he had seen before. A variety of heavily armored creatures scuttled across the battlefield, unleashing enormous spears, clouds of acid and other bizarre attacks. Overhead winged creatures screamed past as they launched exploding eggs or rained down shards of poison.

The most devastating creature however had been a creature that looked like a handful of scaled worms fused together. It's cried demoralized their armies, causing even their stoutest warriors to collapse in pain. And for those caught too close, the scream shattered armor and stripped flesh until there was nothing left.

The only champion they possessed who could confront one had been the Groosalugg, his half-breed nature protecting him from the pain. He alone had stood fast and fight the creature. Silas was even willing to admit the duel had been impressive. Even the creatures had pulled back as if to witness the fight.

However when he had at least stood tall in victory, a spear of bone had flown from within the enemy horde and impaled him. He had time to stagger backwards a single step before he exploded. And just like that, everyone had lost heart.

He had not doubt that attack had been instigated by the cow named Fred. She had been a previously insignificant cow. One of countless others who had been freed when the forces from Earth invaded. However, she had worked with the invaders. Now was often found at the front of many of the battles, riding on one of the beasts.

As if to mock them the cow named Fred still wore her collar as she went into battle. Worse others had taken to emulate her and the cow rebels were now all wearing collars, using it as a symbol of their blasphemous rebellion.

The worst part of the invasion had been the fact that cows had been spared for the most part, proving that it was the lowly cows from Earth who were behind everything. They defied the natural order of things and he was powerless to do anything about it. They had found some way to block the signals to the collars and so they could be used to kill them.

Silas gritted his teeth in rage as he glared at the cows directing the beasts that even now were invading the capital. Behind them he could spot the gleaming metal machines of the humans from Earth.

As if in answer to his prayers portals began opening up. They weren't the white of the cow's portals, but the soothing red of his master's. He smiled as he saw armies of his fellow servants march forth and attack the hordes of monsters from behind. Even a flight of dragons rose up to contest the skies.

For a moment Silas rejoiced as he saw the forces of his lords come to his aid. And then the cows from Earth arrived. The sky lit up as streaks of red tore through all of his reinforcements. Gleaming metal shapes flew through the air as legions of skeletal knights made impossible leaps throughout the area. And all of them raining down red spells that burned holes in the demons below. The few immune to fire were swiftly stabbed or dispatched in a variety of other ways.

Within half an hour after he had thought they were saved the very last of the demons had been dispatched. The portals had quickly closed after some kind of projectile had been launched through the first couple. Even from here he could easily see the enormous explosions.


	18. Chapter 17

Chapter 17

When Warren's resumed campaign came to an abrupt end less then half a year after he had finally resumed it Xander was fairly upset. Earth was finally consolidated under his rule. He had been on the verge of taking over the conquest of this galaxy and letting Warren journey to the Pegasus galaxy.

From what he had gleaned the Pegasus galaxy only possessed the Wraith as a significant threat. He had figured that Warren would enjoy the challenge of fighting against them. None of that mattered now that he was dead.

Somehow the Goa'uld had leaped forward technologically. Their new ships resembled the original Ha'taks, but possessed a ring-like structure above the central pyramid, like a halo. From the data gathered each was several times stronger and tougher then the originals as well. Even worse, their shields were now capable of blocking ion bolts.

If that had been it, Warren would have never fallen seeing as his new ship should still be able to comfortably take on at least a thousand of the new Ha'taks simultaneously and survive. The ambushing forces had barely numbered over a hundred ships.

No the problem stemmed from the new Goa'uld flagship. The ship contained an immensely scaled up plasma cannon equivalent to the spinal laser from the original Eclipse-class Star Destroyers. Capable of cracking the surface of a planet, it had ripped through all of his shields as if they weren't present. Although he had been using quantum armor, he had changed his mind about encasing his ship in it both to lower the construction time and increase the speed of his ship.

The results were a molten skeleton of a ship mostly covered in indestructible armor with everything else vaporized. The spy network, slow ever since the Goa'uld had started heavily restricting the stargate use, had arrived too late. Combined with the transmitted data that included the Goa'uld message taunting Warren before attacking he at least knew what was going on.

Anubis, just like Sokar, was another Goa'uld who had been banished eons ago. Instead of amassing enormous fleets he had apparently focused on obtaining advanced technology. The remaining Goa'uld had been desperate enough to place him in control and he was now upgrading their entire fleet.

The revealing of yet another Goa'uld thought to have vanished was a cause for worry. Xander wondered just how many Goa'uld were really out there in the galaxy. All of them just waiting for the right time to come out of the shadows. It seems his decision to hide was the right one.

 **X - X - X - X - X - X - X - X - X**

Xander swiftly set about reorganizing Warren's Empire. Sending over a Sentinel made the takeover easy since Warren had always used one as a figurehead. The original of course, had been destroyed along with the Executor.

From there he had rapidly began upgrading the technology used, wanting them to push the limits of the technology they had available. With their new shields the previous defensive strategies were no longer viable and he quickly designed a new planetary defense system.

The installation was based upon the Golan Novagun orbital defense platform. He scaled it slightly up until to reached an even three kilometers and used the room to install planetary shield generators and much stronger engines. To make it viable given the new Goa'uld flagship it was entirely encased in quantum armor.

Most of the freed space within the ship was dedicated to hangers. Although a full thousand small craft were housed onboard the real compliment were mines. A quarter of a million mines were stored within dedicated racks although the computers were only capable of running a fifth of them at a time.

The newly dubbed Kraken-class ODPs or orbital defense platforms were to be used in groups of four to protect each planet and in higher concentrations for more important worlds. For the systems under his control he increased the production of Aegis Dreadnoughts.

Xander sent over an entire flight of Telchines to manufacture all of the new Kraken ODPs. The Telchines were to stay and aid the empire afterwards. The Goa'uld hadn't moved since ambushing Warren and he wanted to take advantage of their pause.

His main problem was finding someone to take over the empire. Despite his obsession with the movies, Warren had proven to be a very able administrator for his empire. The majority of his currently trusted staff were much more inclined towards research and possible displays of megalomaniacal displays of power.

After a lot of consideration he had decided to summon Thrawn. One of the Grand Admirals from the Star Wars universe, from his memories and reputation he had achieved his rank through pure merit. Even more then any other he was capable, especially given his appointment despite Palpatine's bias against non-humans.

Thrawn, summoned from the time he was dying, proved amendable to serving the Imperium with only a few modest requests. He had already anticipated his request to summon more of his people, especially his family and friends. The request for a cadre of Force users was surprising, but several squads of Sentinels took care of that easily.

Xander gave him the Nyx for his flagship along with the schematics for phase weapon system. Both the Tollans and the Sharu had the technology to develop phase missiles, but had never created them. The Sharu because they didn't make weapons and the Tollans because of their concentration on ion technology.

The phase missile was briefly phase shifted by the launcher. Since it didn't exist in the same dimension it was able to bypass all defenses that weren't also phase shifted at least in part. Due to a portion of the missile being shifted during the immediate launch, it was also able to accelerate much faster. Testing revealed that they bypassed even Ancient shields.

 **X - X - X - X - X - X - X - X - X**

For Winifred Burkle life was surreal. At times she wasn't quite sure if she was just dreaming. She couldn't call it a nightmare, at least anymore since the past few weeks were oddly pleasant it if was one. Rather then a nightmare it seemed to resemble a surrealist painting.

Ever since her professor had banished her Pylea, she had ended up suffering. Hunted by demonic dogs and then enslaved, life had been horrific and degrading. Oddly, everyone except the priests seemed to speak English and modern English at that, which had only reinforced the idea of her being trapped in a bad dream.

She had eventually escaped, but life in the wilds wasn't too much better. She knew how to camp and hunt, but those all needed supplies, which she didn't have. So she had been forced to go back to the villages to steal supplies. Each time was nerve wracking since she had seen what happened to escaped slaves. The idea of being eaten was terrifying.

She had thought she had worked out the formulas to open the portal back, but they had never worked. She had experimented over and over again until she had just about given any hope when one had finally opened. Only it wasn't to Earth or at least not one that she recognized. She was fairly certain that any one of the creatures she saw would have been news worthy if they had been discovered.

The creatures were horrific and as they had poured forth for a moment she had been convinced she was going to be eaten. Scarfed up like the tacos she dreamed about when she dreamed of home. Thankfully they had ignored her and begun spreading out. She had followed a pack of giant clawed skull snake things out of curiosity.

Any ideas that they weren't as violent as their appearance suggested were dispelled when they came across a patrol of guardsman. They reared back like the snakes they resembled, but then instead of normal hissing it was higher pitched and much louder, like some kind of pressurized hiss like a steam kettle or train whistle.

In astonishment she had seem them jerk back and forth like they were snapping at the air, like dogs in a threatening display. Screams had turned her attention to the guards. They were all down, torn apart and with large holes in their bodies. Examination revealed serrated bone arrows had torn threw them all, judging by the wounds and the single intact sample she found lodged in a breastplate.

Interestingly, all of the creatures had proven hostile towards everything over a certain size. The only exception seemed to be her, which they seemed to completely ignore. The guards and horses were all killed and eaten fairly quickly before they moving on.

Fred decided to stay with them. They didn't seem to mind her and it was nice to have some company, even if it was from monsters. While they seemed odd, they acted a lot like her father's hunting dogs. They were gruff and independent, but wouldn't actually hurt her. She decided to call the snake things Lamias and feeling terribly daring had hitching a ride on one of them.

It froze for a moment when she had gotten on, but after that had ignored her presence. She was reminded of when she was much younger and had ridden the bloodhound around the yard. She was quick to dismount though when they neared the town. She didn't want to take any chances and she remembered how the dogs had accidentally bit her once when they were feeding.

Following a bit behind, Fred was glad to note thee Lamias didn't seem to be targeting any humans. While they quickly wiped out everything else she decided to gather some supplies. She tried to reassure the people she found, but none of them were willing to leave their hiding spots. When the Lamias moved on, she followed them with several packs of looted supplies.

The following few days had passed by quickly. She ate from her supplies and scavenged whenever they took breaks, which thankfully they did fairly often. Demons were all quickly killed and eaten and humans all ran or hid. Her routine was only broken when they ran into the human resistance.

 **X - X - X - X - X - X - X - X - X**

Hearing screams and yells ahead Fred had quickly gotten off the Lamia she normally rode, which had named Spike. Calmly she walked followed as they all charged forwards. A few minutes later when she arrived she froze at the scene before her.

A dozen humans were using spears to attack a giant beetle larger than a van. They were surrounding it and were attempting to stab it with their spears. It was largely ignoring them, shuffling awkwardly in an attempt to avoid stepping on one of them or brushing them with the razor sharp spines jutting out from it's shell. The Lamias had stopped at the edge of the clearing and didn't seem to know what to do.

Fred was still staring in shock when the beetle had let a squeal of pain as one of the humans had managed to stab it in the eye. She glared as they all cheered and yelled encouragement to each other. She dug into the pack that was still lashed onto Spike and furiously jerked out a crossbow. An instant later the spearman had collapsed with a bolt lodged in his leg.

The rest of the men had scattered before turning to face her. They paused when they spotted her group of Lamias, before charging them all with a yell. Fred desperately attempted to reload as they got closer, but knew she wouldn't make it in time. She watched in morbid fascination as the closest spear seemed to fill her vision as it drew near.

A shimmering in the air was the only warning before enormous claws faded into view and shattered the spear. A tall creature, looking like a weird cross between a lizard and a preying mantis moved in front of her and using it's limbs destroyed several other spears. The humans scrambled back and drew into a defensive circle when it faded back out of sight.

Ignoring her racing heart, Fred reloaded her crossbow as quickly as she could with her shaking hands. She noticed with amusement that the beetle had escaped and seemed to be trying to hide behind her. Seeing it's bleeding eye she quickly forgot her fear and turned back to the people.

"And just what do you think you were doing?!" They didn't seem to understand her question.

"Just why were you all so intent on harming this poor helpless giant beetle?" She reached out and stroked it's head and was surprised when it make a buzzing sound deep enough she could feel it in her bones. _It's purring!_

"Be quiet! We don't listen to spies and traitors." They seemed to have found their voice, unfortunately they didn't seem to have found their brains. She noted the lack of slave collars around their necks. _So they were the human resistance she had heard so much about._

The argument went back and forth and would have eventually ended up resulting in violence and possibly her death if another guard patrol hadn't discovered them. Hearing the Lamias emitting their hiss alerted her, but nothing had prepared her to see the beetle roar and charge ahead. It sprayed acid over two of the riders, melting them completely before trampling another. By the time it had turned around the rest had been cut down by bone arrows.

Afterwards the rebels had seemed to accept her presence without any problems, even the one she had shot who was apparently named Finn. The beetle had taken to following her everywhere, kind of like a giganimus puppy. Interestingly, the Lamias had actually stayed around, along with the disappearing guy who seemed to like to pop up and scare people, but not in a bad way.

Crazily enough the rebels had ended up electing her as leader, deciding that her intelligence and creatures both made her the best choice to lead them. She ended up accepting if only be to able to conduct tests with the creatures

It didn't take long to discover that the creatures were attracted the certain scents and sounds. The scents were pretty much of any large creature other then humans or each other and the sounds were pretty much anything fairly structured and artificial. With that in mind she had them make horns and drums out of harvested animals, both the sound and smell of which should allow them to attract creatures in the vicinity.

She had named the beetle Feigenbaum, both because of how it's antennae reminded her of her stuffed rabbit's ears and because she found it's presence just as comforting in a weird slightly terrified of being stepped on way. It was also a gesture on her part, a symbol of her resolution that if the past few years were all a dream, it was high time for her to wake up.

 **X - X - X - X - X - X - X - X - X**

Watching over the scene from a distance, Faith Lehane smiled at what she saw. "Girl's got balls."

Leaving the area, she took a moment to enjoy the breeze blowing through her hair before donning her helmet. She loved her black power armor, but nothing beat the feel of the wind on her face. As soon as it was sealed, she checked the scanners before flying off. Faith loved being a Shadow Knight.

When the demons had first invaded everyone else had panicked, screaming and running and usually dying. Not her though. She grabbed a tire iron and killed the first one and then she had a sword. It just got easier from there.

When the military had finally arrived she was pretty much the only one left alive in her block. A few others had survived too. Sadly, Ms. Dormer, the nice social services lady who tried to help out wasn't one of them.

Watching the Spartoi wipe out the freaks of nature had been one of the best things she had ever seen. She had signed up immediately. She had had to lie about her age, but a few months wasn't that big a deal. Best decision of her life. Training was brutal. She hated it, but loved it at the same time. And when she graduated, she top of the whole damn class.

She had wanted to be a Spartoi or Death Knight as most people called them, but the requirements were insane. Apparently only the Givin and a few other races could actually qualify so she had settled for the newly formed Shadow Knights.

Now she wouldn't transfer even if it was offered. She loved her job, especially seeing as the Death Knights were busy dealing with aliens while she got to help wipe out the demons that had invaded Earth. Getting used the idea of both existing was pretty crazy, but trying to say they didn't exist when they were trying to kill you was just stupid.

Faith slowed down when she approached the camp site. It was a crude base with a few large tents and a small wall. The perimeter guns were all placed near a pair of large metal towers. The towers maintained the portal back to Earth. She had no intention of getting stranded even if the demons were gone. She liked living in a city.

The sentries saluted her as she passed into the command center. As she looked over the reports she sighed at the number of warbeasts that had been driven off by humans. _Xander save us from idiots and traitors_.

Coming to a decision, she addressed the logistics officer. "I found someone. A girl. She seems smart. Maybe crazy, but still, I think she's our best bet. I want a pair of Lictors assigned to her, ones allowed to kill humans."

"Monitor her progress. Hopefully I'll be back in a few weeks. If we're lucky we won't have to get involved anymore and can concentrate on some of the other dimensions."

 **X - X - X - X - X - X - X - X - X**

For Thrawn this life was a second chance. Since he had been allowed to create a list of several hundred of his fellow Chiss, he should easily be able to reshape their society. He had no hidden agenda. He didn't have to secretly work against his leader. This time would be different.

Still, the game still called to him. As much as he loved protecting his people, he loved the theater of war just as much. Predictions and preparations and assets danced across battlefield.

Sadly the enemy this time was much simpler. No overwhelming tide of fury and flesh. No grand tactical strategies to unravel. Within the first day he had his plan. Nothing he had learned since had changed it.

Since he didn't have access to all of the Imperium's technology, he used what he could. A design he had once used for a lesser leader. The missile boat.

It was perfect. Fast, armed with devastating torpedoes, and with the new cloak, stealthy. He diverted almost all production to them.

His plan was simple. Harassment. Small wings of the new missile boats would fly in. Invisible, they would creep up to the ships. Kill them. Volleys of weapons that bypassed armor and shields. Nuclear explosions in the heart of each ship. Then they would leave.

The Goa'uld were simple. With each facing their own losses, they would splinter. They would protect their own worlds individually. A leader couldn't change that. Even a strong leader couldn't change that.

Anubis didn't even try. His only real advantage was his mothership. The Minotaur cruisers should be able to match it, if they encountered it. They were the only other ship he was currently having built. The Nyx-class Dreadnoughts were wasteful. A sledge hammer. The Minotaurs were more then enough for his purpose.

They probably wouldn't get the chance. Anubis was too easy to predict. He had brought his current flagship, the latest Nyx to one of Anubis' worlds. A direct challenge. He wouldn't be able to resist showing off. Combined with his support fleet, most of which were ships he was going to decommission, would be sufficient bait.

The real threat lay hidden. All around him were hundreds of missile boats. All he had available. All of them stealthed. Afterwards, they would scatter. Picking apart the rest of the Goa'uld. For now though, he kept them close.

He wasn't going to take any chances. No he still vividly remembered dying. The Emperor had saved him. He intended to prove himself worthy of the chance.

He didn't have long for such morbid thoughts. An alert interrupted them. A hyperspace wake incoming.

He watched with the rest of the crew as a massive fleet of Goa'uld ships entered the system. His fleet was outnumbered several times over. Just as predicted.

He almost sneered when the flagship ignored everything else to assault him. His ships englobed the dueling flagships, isolating Anubis. The ships traded fire, his shields damaged but the extensive armor holding up.

His fleet scattered, dying in droves as they distracted Anubis' fleet. The Grav Well generator carried in his ship was turned on. The trap was complete.

A few seconds later the area around them seemed to glow as countless missile drives lit up. The Nyx angled it's deflector shields. The explosion still tore through them. The armor still held.

After that, the battle was over. The rest of the Goa'uld ran. Scattered to the winds. Rabble.

The rest of the was would be boring.

 _You truly think so? It is just getting started._

"Identify yourself." He watched with interest as a glowing shape floated through the wall. Perhaps a force-user. He watched the Sentinel's confront it. Sadly, they couldn't strike it.

Thrawn watched with unease as it threw they around. The Sentinel's were methodically killed as it ignored their own attacks. And then they were all down.

As the floated closer, he wondered if the Emperor will resurrect him again. Probably not. He hadn't had time to really prove himself.

When it touched him all he felt was agony. His world dissolved into pain. He felt himself dying, slowly being torn apart and imprisoned within his own mind.

As he loses the battle, darkness descends. An instant later it lifts and he can see again, although he isn't in control. _For the setback you have given me, you will be sentenced to watch as I hunt down and exterminate your entire race._

He watched as his body slowly stands up again, surveying the bridge with a disdainful expression he had never used before. Before it could take a step though the body shuddered. His head looked down to see a large blade coming out of his chest. It was black, absorbing the light, rendered distinct only by his blood flowing down it.

He felt his head turn to see a face out of nightmares. Dark skin, lamprey-like mouth, black eyes. Dashade. He had only seen pictures before. And then it spoke.

"Anubis. I had wondered if there was another force-user in this galaxy." That voice. It was the Emperor's. "I will enjoy feasting on your soul."

It's eyes began glowing. Not like a Goa'uld, but blinding white. His body swayed as the ship seemed to shudder around them.

He could hear his body screaming. Before long he could hear it within his own mind too. If he could, he would have smiled as he felt Anubis' mind unravel. Beautiful and poetic.

As Anubis died, he lose his link to his own body. One by one, his senses disappeared. Until he could only hear Anubis screaming in his mind. Eventually even that faded away.

When he woke up, he was surprised he was still alive. Next to him the body of the Dashade was melting. Burned out from the forces it had channeled.

The rest of the bridge was destroyed. Only his chair had survived. The console indicated an open channel. A glance revealed it was from the Emperor.

He suppressed a groan as he sat down. Everything ached.

As he faced the screen he composed himself. He was still alive. He intended to keep it that way. There was a war to conduct. Hopefully it would be boring.


	19. Chapter 18

Chapter 18

Darth Xander leaned back on his throne with a sigh. It was going to days to integrate the memories from Anubis. Even from the little he could access he knew the situation was dire.

Anubis' last thoughts were mostly rage. Rage at him for killing him. Rage at Thrawn for defeating him. Rage at his fellow Goa'uld who had driven him into exile centuries ago. And most of all rage at the Ascended, who had limited his powers.

Limited. Anubis had been strong enough that he had been forced to call upon his secondary minds to combat him. Over a hundred sentinels had died to provide him with the power to match him. And he was crippled.

It was clear now what his true threat was. And he was preparing for them.

It was clear he needed a much stronger network as well as foci. He needed secondary bodies capable of handling much greater amounts of energy.

Even now, he had the labs working on his newest creation. An alchemical fusion of two of the strongest force using beings in history. Darth Adas, the first sith emperor and Leia Skywalker. Their sithspawned children would serve as his direct voice.

Since Thrawn wasn't using it, the Nyx Dreadnoughts would serve as the transports for his Heralds. The center of each would be comprised of a massive Sith Meditation Sphere. Crystal and metal sculpted to amplify the Force. All of it enhanced in turn by attuned Grav Well generators and Zero Point Generators arrayed around it.

He had designed it months ago, but had never seen a need for such an amplifier. Besides, it would serve as a beacon, alerting everything in the galaxy to his presence if he had ever used one. That no longer mattered. The battle with Anubis was enough to have rendered secrecy obsolete.

The design had required a bit of reworking, containing two seats. His Heralds would be paired, twin born and bonded to deepened and strengthen their Force connection.

The ship lost most of it's hanger space. It didn't need it. A hundred Sentinels would guard each ship. More then enough.

Xander had ordered a thousand Heralds to be constructed.

 **X - X - X - X - X - X - X - X - X**

When an Ascended appeared in the middle of his throne room, Xander was ready. He ignored what it was saying. Soon enough he would know everything it was thinking. While the ships were far from complete, the Heralds themselves had only taken a few days to start being produced.

The six amplifiers he had placed throughout his palace all activated. A dozen pairs of Heralds all networked under his will. The power shattered the floor and caused the entire palace to shake.

He saw the glowing figure standing there. Unmoved. Untouched. Mocking him with it's presence. He continued to ignore it's words as he strained.

Reality tore.

There weren't enough Heralds to contain the energy. The entire palace was destroyed. The capitol city largely vaporized in the explosion.

When Xander woke up in a secondary body he was satisfied. He listened to the damage reports with a distracted air as he furiously thought. He hadn't gotten everything, but what he had gotten was enough. More Ascended would be coming.

The report of a recovered probe droid provided his solution. Apparently the stargates were capable of time travel!

He wasted no time in ordering extensive testing done. The arrival of a message from himself in the future supported his decision. The message contained all the data from years worth of testing and thorough instructions.

Xander sent back a team consisting of an Inquisitor and several Architect droids thirty years into the past. He called it Project Skynet as a nod to the movie and because they were instructed to build a Dyson Sphere. He still ordered the time travels studies to be continued. He had no wish to test for paradox.

When another Ascended finally arrived he was ready. He laughed as he felt the thousands of Heralds connect to his mind in response to his signal. He savored the expression of shock on it's face before he tore it apart.

While successful, he was forced to switch bodies due to the Force storms generated as a side effect. They consumed the continent he had been on before he was able to contain and disperse them. That amount of collateral damage was untenable.

Fortunately it seems he was safe for the moment. The memories from the Ascended, one Ganos Lal, revealed that he had slain the two Ascended who actually actively kept watch over him. The Others, as they deemed themselves, kept themselves apart. Which suited him just fine.

Ganos had known of two crucial pieces of information. One was the existence of another faction, the Ori, who would eventually prove a threat to him. The other was a weapon capable of defeating them.

Xander wasted no time attempting to acquire it. The appearance of a fleet of over a thousand Nyx-class dreadnoughts was overwhelming. If the majority of the fleet hadn't been sent to secure the weapon, the Goa'uld would have been wiped out within days. As it was, weakened by Thrawn's offensive, the Goa'uld lasted almost a month.

 **X - X - X - X - X - X - X - X - X**

The aftermath of the Goa'uld genocide was uneventful. The Sith Imperium steadily expanded and integrated planets into itself. A number of fledgling empires sprung up. They were all crushed, swept away to be forgotten, lost to history.

Once the Milky Way was secure Thrawn was placed in charge of directing to conquest of the Pegasus galaxy. A massive fleet accompanied him. Despite the dangers of the Wraith, Thrawn had assured Xander that the campaign would take less then a year.

The secret weapon had been discovered. The Sangraal, created by Merlin himself, proved to be the perfect tool. Developed in Pylea the first of the demonic realms conquered, the Others had no warning.

He had used the first one to take out the Wolf, Ram and Hart. Without their leadership, he was free to setup a production line for more without anyone knowing.

The next four were deployed within minutes of each other. The first cleared the Milky Way of the Others. The second was sent to the Pegasus galaxy to do the same. The last two were both sent to the Ori galaxy to make sure they were eradicated. A number of new generals were eager to try their hand at conquering a galaxy.

He wasn't planning on stopping there. Darth Xander would brook no rival powers and ordered a Sangraal detonated annually. Between that and a sufficient stockpile he would ensure no Ascended ever threatened him again.

In the meantime Xander had ordered the expansion of the results of Project Skynet, which he had lazily labeled the Skynet Station. A fully developed Dyson Sphere with thousands of amplifying chambers along with the Heralds to man them had proven to have limited range. While they could cover a large portion of the galaxy, it wasn't total.

So Xander had decided to combine to results of that with another project.

Sadly the demon researchers had made little progress with the Dimension Engine. The study was as illogical as magic, probably why they had started calling it Arcanotechnology. The only significant development was of a functional mech using mostly Earth level technology. It performed well beyond it's components dictated, being incredibly responsive. Alternative configurations other than humanoid didn't seem to gain this benefit.

Interestingly, the humanoid mech when constructed with the benefit of his full tech base still performed disproportionately better. They had also tested it on droids and discovered that humanoid droids also gained some of those benefits. It was posited that a combination of organic and mechanical systems yeilded the best results. Even the mechs didn't perform as well if piloted a droid.

The Dimension Engine it seems, was not entirely logical. Xander decided to not worry about it, using the suspension of disbelief he had honed before becoming a sith. However, it was still a fairly reliable, unlimited power supply. And it was the key to his new project.

Skynet Stations, powered by arrays of Dimension Engines instead of a sun and possessing enough engines to move, even if slowly, were to be spread throughout the void between galaxies. Serving as relays and amplifiers, they would serve to allow his presence to encompass the entirety of his empire. With enough of them he would have an unlimited stream of energy. With enough of them he would be a god.


End file.
